It’s that time of year to celebrate everyone’s favourite irrational number: pi!
Check out this video about Pi Day (it’s focused on the US, but gives some background):
Leading up to Pi Day, Friday March 14, students are rotating through various pi-related activities. Pi doesn’t show up in our math curriculum until grade 7, so for us, we’re exploring this math concept just for fun! Our Pi Day activities include team work, games, and art. On Friday we will celebrate Pi Day by having a “Pi Off” to see who can memorize the longest decimal of pi (the official world record is 70 030 digits, set by Suresh Kumar Sharma!) We already have some students who can recite more of pi than I, so I can’t wait to hear what they come up with for “Pi Day Friday!”
We love this song to help us practice!:
(Did you catch that?)
In Term 2, students have had many opportunities to work together in pairs or small groups. Thinking bigger picture, EVERYday we work together as a whole to help the classroom run smoothly. We often talk about how our actions contribute to the safety and comfort of everyone, and that learning to work together takes practice and reflection. There are times when we might have disagreements or frustrations, and how we decide to get through those challenges has a learning curve. Emotions can be big! Adults know that when they go to work they aren’t going to be friends with everyone, but they do have to work together to achieve common goals. In school, when children are still developing their self-regulation strategies and social skills, group work can feel very intense. We continue to build our resilience, communication skills, and self-regulation strategies as we learn together in groups.
Last week Division 5 learned a bit about the history of the Métis sash, or ceinture fléchée. We tried our hand (or rather our fingers) at a textile technique called “finger weaving,” used by Indigenous peoples all over North America. Here is a video about some of the history of the Métis sash.
Sport stacking, also known as cup stacking or speed stacking, is an individual and team sport that involves stacking 9 or 12 (usually 12) specially designed cups in pre-determined sequences as fast as possible. The cups are specially designed to allow for speedier times, so the sport doesn’t work so well with regular cups. People of all ages and from all over the world compete in sport stacking.
Division 5 has been learning about properties as one part of computational thinking in Applied Design Skills and Technologies (ADST). A couple of weeks ago, Ms. Gammon took us over to SFU to identify and compare some local plants and learn how they were/are used by Coast Salish people. Students had to examine the properties of the plants in order to identify them.