MODELING AND PROJECTS: HEALTHY EATING, ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AND PROPOSING A THEME

Abstract

This work presents a proposal of modeling activities designed and implemented in a seventh-level course (12 years old). The activities include three phases: understanding modeling, modeling itself, and formulating modeling projects. These phases are intended to facilitate the modeling process. The activities are contextualized in themes of interest: healthy eating, awareness of the garbage produced, and the third phase, student proposals of a theme and problem. These proposals emphasize the development of contextualized problems where the mathematics emerge naturally from the themes. The aim of the study was to understand the difficulties and potentialities of implementing the modeling activities and was approached through a qualitative research, collecting data from the students' productions, and an interview with the course teacher. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data, from which categories emerged relating to students’ and teachers’ difficulties and potentialities. Results indicate that, on one hand, the proposal allowed students to visualize the mathematical difficulties and thus, support them; on the other hand, working with contextualized situations allowed the students to participate in the activities and develop communication and complementary skills. These activities allowed students to relate mathematics to real-life situations, visualizing its importance and identifying how it can be used in diverse contexts.