Having fun with maths
Laura Franzoi, Francesca Valzania, Debora Pau
A lot of dropouts and refusals and lots of the problems suffered by children and young adults in schools today could be prevented or solved with a revolution in teaching methods and a greater dialogue with the student. Feeling good is essential in the school environment, so as to create a suitable fabric to stimulate the desire to learn, to know and to do research. Aiming at this goal, we wondered if we could play with Maths and in July 2019 we activated the «Matematica in gioco» project, which involved 22 students of a Secondary School, coming from Year 8, who had strong deficiencies and an attitude of closure towards Mathematics. In February 2020, some months later, we gathered the first results, and this allowed us to discover, but also to confirm that an alternative teaching method can help to cure and even to prevent a lot of rejections, especially towards Mathematics.
Keywords
Didactics of mathematics, Metacognition, Motivation, Learning mathematics, Math activities.