In “What are you, Mathematics?”, the students explored what Maths is as a field of knowledge, using the internet and encyclopedias as research methods/ sources to examine not only the terminology, but also other information, focusing on three main activities:

• They studied how Maths developed since prehistoric times until nowadays and they built a timeline, highlighting important historical landmarks in this subject.

• They studied Maths in terms of its fundamental disciplines, such as logic, algebra, analysis, geometry or discrete Mathematics, collecting and working on keywords (e.g. rectangle, square, circle…) in Portuguese and in English. This vocabulary was explored in a matching game and displayed as a poster at school. It was also organised in an e-book that was included in our project website.

• The students learned about outstanding mathematicians throughout history and they wrote a summary of their profiles, which was also displayed. You can still consult biographies of excellent mathematicians.

 

In conclusion, it is important to emphasize that this is a work in progress. Hence, it has been done progressively, always bearing in mind the objectives of the project.

 

October 2017