Simplificando os vírus: uma contribuição para o ensino de microbiologia

Abstract

The present study was elaborated from the need of alternatives learning methods to traditional classes on microbiology teaching in schools, specifically about viruses. Biology teachers face difficulties such as: extensive curriculum, few weekly classes, lack of specific materials, diversity of living beings with their own characteristics and distant nomenclature of the student's daily life. The teaching of virology is very complex, since viruses cannot be easily visualized, which makes the content very abstract for students, in addition to little explored issue in textbooks. With all these difficulties, teachers, usually, choose to use the traditional teaching method, with expository classes, which can be boring and uninteresting, and often the content is not fully understood by the student. Aiming to improve the dynamics of classes related to this content, the objective of this work is to develop a board game that is easy to build and apply in order to make virology classes more interesting and attractive. In addition to bringing more knowledge to students on this subject and verify if the game has a positive aspect in learning the microbiology content. The intervention proposal was developed at Colégio Municipal Rio Branco, in Visconde do Rio Branco - MG, with two classes from the first year of high school, totaling seventy-eight students. The research followed a qualitative and quantitative approach, in four classes of fifty minutes each, being an expository class; extra-class research and a class for discussion; two classes for the application of a board game and two questionnaires (qualitative and quantitative). According to the qualitative questionnaires, students classified the game as interesting, attractive, dynamic, competitive and stated that it caused an increase in interest in the subject. In the statistical result of comparing grades of classes in the quantitative questionnaire, there is no difference between grades. Since class A has a lower grade point average compared to class B, the game may have helped to match the performance of both classes. From the developed research, it is concluded that educational games are important auxiliary tools in the teaching-learning process of biology. They do not exclude the other teaching methods, but might be considered as an option for improved the methodologies employed.