This research considers the concept of place, a category for analyzing geographical space, to
be important and necessary in the teaching-learning process of the geography curriculum in
the final years of elementary school. From this perspective, teaching through place highlights
the construction of identity and belonging to a given reality in one's life, whether private or in
a group, making up, through experiences, the construction of experiences that are expressed in
places. The research was carried out in the city of Araguatins, in the state of Tocantins, in
three state elementary schools in the final years, with the school subjects (teachers and
students), allowing us to establish an understanding of the teaching of the category of place in
the geography curriculum. The general objective of this research is to analyze whether the
notion of place is constructed by the schoolchildren of Araguatins from the classes of the
geography curriculum component, related to the concept of place. The data collected from the
interviews with the teachers and the drawings made by the students were used to analyze
whether they had constructed the notion of place. The research was carried out using the
qualitative method, in which the results obtained from the classification and analysis of the
interviews with the geography teachers indicated that, for the most part, they work with the
category of place in relation to the elements present in the reality lived by these subjects, and
the drawings constructed by the students, on the object of knowledge notion of place, showed
elements present in the city that presuppose the place for these subjects. On the other hand,
the results showed that there are classroom teachers who do not have a degree in geography
and, for this reason, find it difficult to define the concept of place, confusing it with location
without symbolic elements present for the construction of a notion of place. In addition, the
Araguaia River, which is an element present in the city of Araguatins, appears as one of the
symbols for the construction of a notion of place by the school subjects.
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