Didactic proposal for application of fold techniques (origami) on teaching geometry contents in primary school. Case study (Original)

Abstract

Inside Mathematics, the geometric concepts are important because, through them, the subject of the learning develops a special type of thought that allows to understand, to describe and to act in an organized way in the world that one lives. In that perspective, in this work, Origami is approached as pedagogic alternative to make possible the teaching process and geometry learning, that consists of discussing forms of working geometric concepts, starting from the use of folds, exposing theoretical and practical knowledge of Plain Geometry. The research method is a case study that has as subjects a group of the 5th class of the Primary School Nº. 8, composed by 40 student, with ages between 10 and 12 years. A didactic sequence was applied to explain through origami’s constructions, some concepts and geometric properties already learned previously in class. Later, an evaluation theoretical and practical was applied to investigate the students' learning in relation to the applied sequence.   The making of some simple origamis, as part of the activities of the didactic sequence, was very interesting for the children because, besides appreciating the geometric constructions again that they had already seen and obtained in the first part of the activity, the gaming aspect contained in those constructions increased the interest of the students. The use of the origami, showed to be a motivator didactic resource of the students' interest and, mainly, an effective methodological tool for the teaching Geometry.