O ensino de botânica para uma alimentação saudável utilizando uma horta escolar

Abstract

The teaching of botany is marked by a series of problems, in spite of the level of education. One of the difficulties pointed by researches is the lack of interest in plants from the students. Society does not yet recognizes the importance of the plants for mankind, and, as a consequence, the interest for botany is very low, and plants are passed by on a daily. Facing this matter, the present work, with the theme botany teaching for a healthy diet using a school garden, aims that the students can recognize the diversity of plants in their diet and those of medicinal use, and develop the will for conservation. The methodology of project pedagogy was the used in the garden to take the student out of the school schedule and to support the learning process. The project pedagogy offers the student the opportunity to learn in a new way, involving it in the knowledge construction, aiming to constitute conscious, critical and participative students. The project was run at the João Matos School, located in the Montese district in Fortaleza, with second year high school students. The activities of the project were acomplished during the second semester of 2016, during three ocasions. The first meeting was at the school laboratory, where the students answered an 8 question quiz, which was then collected for analysis, with the objective of acquiring the previous knowledge about plants and direct the project activities. The second meeting also occured at the laboratory, where groups of students participate of a floral and leaf morphology analysis practice. In this moment, a student preparation happened, regarding the presentation of the plant identification key, specifically developed for the garden activity. The last meeting was run at the school garden, where the students were divided into groups, using the plant identification key, previously mentioned, to identificate a determined plant family at the garden. The quiz analysis showed, in general, that the students don’t recognize the plant diversity that compose their diet, neither do they recognize their medicinal properties, and these are unnoticed. Most of them now consider plant preservation and the presence of a school garden important, for it’s as a space that offers learning processes a major contact with plants. Therefore, the project allowed the comprehention of the students difficulties related to botany, the need to approach this theme in a contextualized way, with the goal of developing a position about preservation and conservation of plants and the environment by the students.