Confecção de exsicatas: uma ferramenta para o ensino de botânica.

Abstract

Exsictes are samples of plants collected in the field, pressed, dried and mounted on paperboard, which constitutes the collection called herbarium. These are intended to serve as documentation for the purposes of taxonomic, floristic, and ecological studies. However, they can also be used in high school to develop Botany concepts. Even in this context, the present study had as objective to analyze the contributions in the teaching-learning process of the students, through the insertion of theoretical-practical classes and use of didactic model and to evaluate the improvement of the knowledge of vegetal morphology of the students, in a class of second year of high school in a public school in Fortaleza - CE, an institution that I followed during my high school stages. The students were submitted to the type of active methodology, where they carried out the entire process of preparing the proposal. In this method, the student is an active subject in the learning process. The students used the processes of collection, herborization and confection of exsicatas as a method of exploration and interpretation of the plants present in the school and elaboration of the didactic model (exsicte), later used in theoretical-practical classes. The students answered quantitative and qualitative questionnaires to evaluate the proposal. The results indicated that the didactic model elaborated was considered advantageous by the students, as it brings the students closer to the plants, provoking a meaningful learning, because the students study the terms and concepts together with the practice. The obtained yields also showed that the students progressed their knowledge in relation to the vegetal morphology. Therefore, the didactic tool showed to be efficient in the classes of vegetal morphology, being considered in this study a material of low cost and accessible to the school community. In addition, the research allowed the researcher the feedback regarding the relevance of evaluating their practice, seeking to identify the deficiencies and the evolution of the students, when submitted to the use of innovative didactic proposals.