Abstract:

Study some numbers in mathematics’ subject and some of their specificities in basic schools can be challenging for both students and teachers. Numbers have been an important tool in many areas of mathematics, serving as support for significant results, not only in mathematics, but also in related sciences. In the literature the reader can find studies involving the properties of several number sequences. One of such sequence that is well known is the Fibonacci sequence which has been studied and used to motivate for teaching mathematics. The use of most varied challenges that provides teachers to teach mathematical content and make it more motivating classroom environment for this discipline is now a reality.

In all levels of education, the mathematical discipline (or certain subject related with mathematics) is often seen as a difficult subject, with certain content that require some level of abstraction that is not easily achieved by our students. Sometimes with the use of certain tools that can motivate students in their learning and help teachers in teaching mathematics, we can create a classroom environment conducive to bridge this negative view of this discipline or area. In this paper it is our purpose to show how the sequence of Lucky numbers can be one of those tools to use in teaching some mathematical content and in the students' learning regarding those contents in particular case of basic education. The sequence of Lucky numbers is a sequence which elements are the result of a sieving process which is somewhat different from the sieving process leading to the prime numbers by the use of the sieve of Eratosthenes. In this paper it is our intention, first to introduce the sequence of Lucky numbers and study some properties related with sieve of Eratosthenes and then we propose some mathematical tasks/challenges with this sequence in order to implement in the classroom.

Keywords:

Lucky Numbers, Mathematical tasks, Basic education, Teaching mathematics, Learning mathematics.