Coloração em grafos: uma experiência no Ensino Fundamental

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to analyze, within a Case Study, an experiment with Graph Coloring problems that involves 40 students of the 9th grade of Elementary School from the Educandário Monteiro Lobato, in Campo Grande/RJ. To carry out the experiment we did 8 lessons of 50 minutes. In the first classes, a motivational questionnaire (adapted from Questionnaire of Gontijo) and a test involving questions of logical reasoning (Test 1) was applied, which students can solve with the regular curriculum. Such questions are solved easily with techniques from Graph Coloring, but at this stage the students obviously still do not know them. After the tests, some classes were dedicated to teaching basic concepts of graphs and simple coloring techniques. In the final classes was applied Test 2 (in the form of Test 1), where students can already choose to use techniques of Coloring to solve the questions, and then a Final Questionnaire, to evaluate what they found in the classes. After the study, results showed a significant improvement in the development of the activities that use the idea of Graph Theory - Coloring, by the students. Their participation and motivation was one of the positive aspects of this research, as well as the different solutions found to solve the activities proposed during the study.