EXERCISE CREATION WHEEL IN MATH CLASSES

Abstract

When students participate in a math class, most of the time they already know in advance what tasks the teacher will propose in the classroom. Generally, they know they'll have to solve a list of exercises, find solutions to equations, reason about certain problems, complete textbook pages, among other tasks. Students frequently receive exercises to do, proposed by the teacher, and the goal of this article is to change this dynamic of how tasks function in math classes. It proposes an activity where students sit in a circle and create exercises themselves on a specific topic on a sheet of paper, then pass the exercise to the side for their colleague to solve. This task was proposed to a 1st-year class in Technical High School in Mechanics at the Celso Suckow da Fonseca Federal Center for Technological Education (CEFET/RJ), and a 1st-year High School class at the Centro Internacional de Educação Integrada (CIEI), covering the topic of Modular Equations and Inequalities. At the end of the activity, the students filled out a satisfaction questionnaire, and the results obtained were that the class became more enjoyable for the students, thus enriching their teaching-learning process. However, the majority of students demonstrated difficulty in expressing: how they felt during the task, whether this activity led to a better relationship with mathematics, and a broader view of the subject, showing that they are not accustomed to conducting this more introspective and emotional evaluation of their learning.