Teaching and learning scientific contents in basic education: the digestive system

This research investigated the preconceptions of fourth year elementary school students about the digestive system to elaborate a didactic sequence that was applied in order to evaluate the evolution of students’ ideas throughout the teaching process. The student conceptions reduced the digestive system to a "tube" whose main organ was the stomach. After application of the sequence, the evolution of students’ knowledge was verified and descriptive and morph functional terms was used, indicating that didactic strategies developed students view and contributed to acquisition of scientific knowledge in the initial grades of elementary school