Coloração em grafos: uma experiência no ensino médio

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to describe an experience with problems related to graph coloring with a group of 2nd year high school students. The survey worked with students from a private school located in the city of Volta Redonda, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. This research had the participation of 51 students aged 15 to 17 years, among boys and girls, who wanted to voluntarily participate in the extracurricular classes offered. The idea of this work is to use the fact that the basic concepts of coloring in Graph Theory are easily accessible to students, they are powerful optimization tools used by large companies and are applicable to students' everyday problems, three precious characteristics for a Professor to attract the attention of the class. In this regard, we held 8 meetings with students. At first, there was a Motivational pre-test based on Gontijo´s test in order to evaluate various aspects of the relationship of students with mathematics. In the second meeting, a Content Pre-test with everyday students' problems commonly solved by graphs' techniques, but that can also be solved without them. Over the next four meetings, classes were held in order to teach some basic techniques of graphs and discuss with students what they did on the test. After those four classes, the next meeting was used for the students to take a Content Post-test with similar problems, but with the intention of observing how the students would apply the techniques they learned. On the last meeting, the students took a Motivational Post-test, so that they could give their opinion on the activities. All data were studied, analyzed and compared in the final chapters