Looking for fun activities: narratives of early elementary school teachers in training

Abstract

The place that games and fun activities occupy in mathematics classes in the early years of elementary school is the central point of this article, which problematizes this issue from the narratives of perceptions of two teachers of a 1st grade and a 4th grade teacher at elementary school, who participated in continuing education for teachers. Thus, it takes as reference the cut of a qualitative research that was conducted after verifying the need to study the theme through a systematic review based on Costa and Zoltowski (2014). It also covers issues related to games and fun activities according to Muniz (2016), giving visibility to the learning potential of this approach in mathematics classes. The research information was obtained with the help of drawings made by the teachers participating in a continuing education course for teachers who teach Mathematics and, also, from the researcher's notes in the field diary related to the observations of the classes of the investigated course, as well as from interviews. For the in-depth analysis of the information, we developed the study of the narratives and drawings of the three teachers who participated in the continuing education course. Among the results obtained with the analyses, it was found that the teachers were close to the theme of play and interested in developing themselves professionally. Thus, the approach of games and fun activities in teacher training courses is considered an interesting way to value and implement play in mathematics classes, which is essential to ensure concepts that go beyond the traditional teaching of this subject.