Conservation Tree: A Game for Teaching Science, Botany, and Environmental Education

Abstract

In recent decades, the teaching of Biology and Natural Sciences has been primarily focused on preparing students for college entrance exams (Silva, 2019), reducing education to the memorization of concepts, rules, and processes and limiting nature to repetitive events (Costa; Mota; Brito, 2021). To fully comprehend scientific knowledge, it’s necessary to consider everything that surrounds the organisms discussed in these courses (Monerat & Rocha, 2018). Botany education was, for an extended period, disconnected from the natural environment (Pereira-Ribeiro et al., 2018). Publications in the field predominantly emphasized foreign flora and landscapes over domestic ones, leading to a decline in interest in botany (Mello, 1996) and, consequently, neglecting the native landscape as part of students’ daily life. Alternative teaching tools are crucial for understanding the subjects taught in the classroom and for retaining the terminology and concepts presented in theoretical classes across various disciplines (Perini & Rossini, 2018). The participation of students in group games aims to stimulate children and adolescents to develop logical reasoning and promote greater social integration among students (Paiva; Fonseca; Colares, 2022). In this context, this university extension project’s primary objective is to develop and test methodological strategies as alternative tools for teaching Natural Sciences, Botany, and Environmental Education. The foundation of these strategies is botanical educational games rooted in regional flora, which were tested in 6th-grade classrooms at the State School Maria Almeida do Nascimento in Coari/AM. The methodology includes meetings with student extensionists to outline evaluation measures, the application of games, and the dissemination of the results. These results have been made available as an alternative methodological tool for the school’s teachers. As a result, it was observed that the game effectively facilitated the introduction and consolidation of botanical content, particularly in plant morphophysiology and environmental conservation, among community learners, who are 6th-grade students for whom the game is intended.