ALGEBRA TITLES IN BASIC EDUCATION: AN EXAMPLE WITH ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSIONS

According to national and international curricular guidelines, algebra is an essential theme of the school math curriculum and emerges as a fundamental theme from the middle school years. All students should develop a learning algebra that promotes the development of language and algebraic thinking, but this is sometimes not achieved, since algebra is one of the mathematical themes for which students continue to have many difficulties.

The main objective of this work is to study the algebraic expressions and once a variable is assigned a value, the value can be used in place of that variable. We use the applet Algebra Titles, in order to improve the traditional teaching methodology, facilitating and encouraging the development of skills and improvement of student learning. Algebra Titles is an applet that uses rectangles called tiles to represent variables and numbers in order to help in learning the content involved. Specifically, we intend to highlight the contributions of the use of an applet in students' learning, regarding the study of algebraic expressions.

This study was developed with twenty-four students in a class of 7th grade of 3rd cycle of basic education and was carried in the context of a teaching experience during the teaching of the topic Functions. Methodologically we opted a qualitative and interpretative research approach, created on a case study, based on the data collection in the direct observation of a fifty-minute class and in the written productions of the students. A task was proposed that the students performed individually. The teacher is an author and assumed the role of observer.

The results show that the proposal developed is valid and suitable for students in the 7th grade of elementary school. In addition, it was noticed that during the study of algebraic expressions, the applet contributed to the teaching and learning process, as the performance of students was significantly better than usual, even those who had poor mathematics. It is considered that the experience can be reapplied in other classes with the same results.