Creating animations with Scratch programming: a possibility to learn trigonometry in the right triangle

Abstract

This paper presents the creation of animations done with programming as a possibility to study the triangle trigonometry in Elementary Education. The text is an excerpt from a master’s dissertation that researched the contributions of the programming language Scratch as a learning tool for Mathematics in Elementary Education. It was a qualitative research that collected data using the observations of the researcher documented in a field diary, an interview with the participants, and audio and video recordings of the activities. The participants were twelve students of the second year of High School in a Public School in Rio Grande do Sul; they produced animations with trigonometry in the right triangle, using the Scratch language. The main theoretical support used to analyze the data was the Constructionist theory, by Seymour Papert, who studied the use of computers and programming as tools to build knowledge. The results indicate that the use of programming to study trigonometry helps to keep students motivated and engaged during the activities, to develop autonomy, and, also, to improve the learning process.

Keywords: Mathematics. Learning Process. Programming. Trigonometry. Digital Technologies.