Teachers working in the municipal education network of 20 Brazilian cities are participating in the training sessions of O Círculo da Matemática do Brasil in 2015. There are two 4-hour sessions in which project educators present the project’s approach and carry out group activities. These meetings are organized in partnership with municipal departments of Education, which schedule dates, provide venues and send out invitations to the teachers.
These new training sessions meet a demand from schools and teachers that saw students participate in Círculo sessions in the last two years and who enjoyed the project. The purpose of these training sessions is to share the participative and cooperative approach of O Círculo da Matemática do Brasil, which contributes so that youths enjoy mathematics and improve their skills in the subject. The group activities are shown and made available for teachers, who then decide how and if they want to use these group activities in their classrooms.
In the first training session, participants get to know the approach and the learning instruments of the project. In the second session, they have the opportunity to share their experiences in the application of what they were shown during the first meeting in their classrooms. In addition to the training sessions, teachers receive workbooks with all the materials used in the sessions and receive the support of a Teacher Support Central so they can clarify doubts, send activities that they carried out with their students, check out tips and suggestions of challenging activities they can execute with their students.
Training sessions have already occurred in São Paulo-SP, Sério-RS, Porto Alegre-RS, Lajeado-RS and São Luís-MA. In the next few weeks, Marabá-PA, Eusébio-CE, Fortaleza-CE, Novo Hamburgo-RS, Manaus-AM and Niterói-RJ will host training sessions, on August 29th, September 2nd, September 16th, September 17th, September 21st, September 29th and September 30th, respectively. It’s expected the participation of 1,800 teachers in these training sessions in 2015, applying this approach to 55,000 public school students.
