Abstract:

Hardly a class goes by without a thought about the lack of motivation of some students to learn mathematical contents, as well as the necessary motivation of each teacher to make the difference. Therefore, motivation must arise from the teachers so that through their professional practice, they can provide their students with challenging tasks. In order to check if the tasks that we had designed, mainly based on games, stimulated the students’ motivation for learning, a study was applied in a 3rd grade class of primary school education, whose method of data collection was an inquiry by a questionnaire survey carried out in two phases: a pre-test and a post-test. First of all, in the pre-test it was verified if the students were motivated about the learning of mathematical concepts. After the test, more student-centered tasks, mostly game activities were developed, and finally students were asked again about their motivation to learn with a post-test, and the data collected were compared. A qualitative methodology following a case study design was carried out in which participants belonged to a group of 27 students, 33% (9 out of 27) male and 67% (18 out of 27) female, all aged eight. However, only 26 students participated in this study, since one of the parents did not give permission for their daughter to take part in the study. The questionnaires were made available in the first class (pre-test) and in the last class of a period of teacher training (post-test). This questionnaire was based on a Likert scale, which consists of a set of items, from totally agreeing to fully disagreeing. Due to the age range of the pupils, it was decided to substitute this scale for the corresponding smiles and it was discussed with the participating children in order to clarify all doubts and procedure. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to complete the practical and analytical work and in the processing of the data relating to the analysis of the responses to the questionnaire surveys. In this work, special attention has been given to how to improve teaching methods and how to make it more motivating for students, aiming to understand if games are a way to make children more motivated. We concluded that the participants of this study were initially (pre-test) motivated, but after the implementation of the various activities, mainly as didactic games, from the analysis and discussion of the results of the post-test that this motivation continued and was still developed further.

Keywords:

Mathematics, teaching training, motivation, primary school, games.