Pi Day is the biggest mathematical holiday that is celebrated in my middle school. Years ago, I had students bring in pies and we did a few fun pi day activities in my own classroom. Today, students at my school bring in pies and, along with the many pi day activities taking place in individual classrooms, over 1,000 students celebrate by eating pie at lunchtime. PTA volunteers usually help to organize and distribute the pies.
Pi Day Plans, Activities, Videos, and More
The purpose of this post is to share with you some ideas that you might like to use in your classroom on Pi Day (March 14 – the date that corresponds to the first 3 digits of pi). I will include links to two fun pi videos that I plan to share in my class, funny pi cartoons, and a link to the simple activity that I use to help students discover pi for themselves. [Read more…]
Every day when my students enter the classroom, they have a set of 5 warm-up problems awaiting them. The first 5-10 minutes of each class period are spent working on these problems, checking them, and getting some mini-lessons in along the way.
I love project based learning! When I started teaching over 25 years ago most of the curriculum that I was given consisted of flipping to the next two-pages in the textbook and working the problems that I selected. Not satisfied with this approach to teaching math, I was soon on the hunt for powerful math activities and projects that would infuse life into my math classroom. More on that quest in a moment.
