PADRÕES E O TRABALHO COM SEQUÊNCIAS RECURSIVAS: UMA ABORDAGEM NO DESENVOLVIMENTO DO PENSAMENTO ALGÉBRICO

Abstract

This paper aims to present educational proposals for the teaching of algebra in order to promote the development of students' algebraic thinking. To do so a bibliographical survey searching for papers that demonstrate that such goal can be achieved through an education that prioritizes the recognition and the generalization of mathematical patterns was conducted. At first, we tried to analyze how some textbooks of elementary school deal with this issue. To address high school, we highlighted the sequences defined recursively, which appear as a good starting point for the generalization of patterns. Thus, we present a study of the methods of solving the recurrence relations that allows the formula to find the general term for this type of sequence. Moreover, with the study of linear recurrences, it is possible to propose an alternative approach to teaching progressions in high school. Seeking to work with numerical regularities to describe and generalize relationships, we suggest the use of computational resources, in particular, the use of spreadsheets as a methodological approach in the teaching of algebra.