Experimentação utilizando como contexto alimentos e alimentação: uma abordagem para o ensino de Química

Abstract

Chemistry classes are seen by many students as boring or difficult to understand, generating disinterest and discouragement in the study of this science. One way of reversing this situation is the insertion of contextualization and experimentation in chemistry teaching, as a way of bringing scientific knowledge closer to students' daily lives, as well as arousing greater interest from experimental activities. Having foods and feeding as this focus, it emerges as the main theme for an experimentation activity, since they are treated at all levels of education and are part of everyone's life. That way, this study was carried out in a municipal school in Recife - PE, with students from the 6th to the 9th grade of elementary school and had the general objective: To develop and carry out an experimentation activity in the teaching of chemistry, seeking to promote the awareness of students of a school in the city of Recife on the quality of food and healthy eating practices, in order to contextualize chemical knowledge with everyday life. The research, classified as qualitative and of the pedagogical intervention type, was carried out with 22 students participating in the Science Club of the Science and Technology Laboratory of the school, in three meetings, each lasting 60 minutes. In the first methodological moment, the students' previous conceptions about the concepts of foods, healthy eating and food quality were collected; In the second stage, a dialogic expository class was held, seeking to introduce students to the chemistry present in this theme; And in the third and last stage, the importance of food quality was discussed and an experimental activity was performed on the physical-chemical analyzes used to attest to the quality of the milk consumed by the students. Data collection was made from questionnaires applied during the pedagogical intervention, as well as observations of the class during classes. It was noticed with the answers to the questionnaires, that at the beginning of the activity, most students did not have knowledge about the composition of foods, but that in general they had a balanced diet due to the number of meals eaten in the full school. During the execution of the activity, especially in the experimentation part, the class showed a lot of interest in studying the subject and because it was something that was part of their daily life, there was great participation and acceptance of the class, thus concluding that contextualization and experimentation are essential and in fact great allies for the teaching of chemistry. In the end, it was found that there were advances in the answers given by the students and it is hoped that with this activity, the participating students have awakened to issues related to healthy eating, food quality and how chemistry is present in the most diverse situations around us,not just limited to what is studied in the classroom.