Grafos: uma proposta aplicada ao cotidiano de alunos do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This paper was developed with the purpose of introducing a new concept of math to a group formed by 9th-grade elementary students of a municipal school from Porto Alegre. We wished to teach the fundamentals of the Graphs theory, as well as broad such knowledge from beyond the traditional curriculum, leading them to investigations in the search of patterns and regularities as well as solving problems. The initial strategy was the presentation of a problem situation present in the daily life of the students to, in this way, cause the curiosity for the subject and, from this point, introduce concepts related to Graphs and its elements. In this paper, we make a report of all these activities, reflecting about the theory and the pedagogical practice and giving opinions about the receptivity of students to each step. On the attemp to evidence the learning by experience when local geographic data is used, we simulate a real problem of their daily lives, which was solved innitially on an intuitive way. Posteriorly it was also used the Dijkstra algoritm.