Project to Train 6th And 7th Grade Students in Math Olympiads

Abstract

In Brazil, the teaching of mathematics present itself in a decontextualized, inflexible and immutable way, it being the product of privileged minds. The Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad (OBMEP) is a national project directed to the public and private schools, it carried out by the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, with the support of the Brazilian Society of Mathematics and it is promoting by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications. This project came about in order to improve the interest of mathematics in children and adolescents, and also, to solve difficulties that for many people turn out to be something frustrating. In addition, it contributes to a higher classification of them in OBMEP, which it's an important competition to discovery of new talents. Voluntarily, students from various engineering courses were instructed and trained to teach classes to 99 students enrolled in the 6th and 7th years, with 52% belonging to public schools and the other 48% of private schools. Contents in the areas of Arithmetic, Combinatorial Analysis and Geometry were addressed, on Saturdays, at the Federal University of Technology, Parana, for free and didactic. The approximation of the academic community to society, together with the constant participation of the family and the encouragement of the teachers, it contributed significantly to the success of the project. Besides to presenting a greater number of classified in relation to previous editions, statistics point to satisfactory results, not only in the educational area, but also in the social context, once the students have come into contact with children of the same age, but different realities. Students dropout rates were lower for public school (42%), it be confirming the need for more attention in education and it be reinforcing the relevance of this work.