Posts Tagged ‘elementary classrooms’
Ripley students learn about Pi with a number of activities
Ripley students learn about Pi with a number of activities
Special to the OBSERVER
RIPLEY – On Friday, March 12, Math Week at Ripley Central School culminated with the second Annual Pi Day Battle. And the winner is mathematics and all the students at RCS.
The brainchild of math teachers Lisa Stonefoot and Donna Lauzon, Math Week has become a major event in the school year for Ripley students. The majority of the funds needed to pull off the event are contributed by Stonefoot and Lauzon. “If you could just see the excitement in the classes in the week leading up to the battle,” said Ms. Stonefoot. “It makes it all worth it.” getting students excited about math and making it relevant in their daily lives is a major accomplishment and Stonefoot and Lauzon relish getting their students enthused for the competitions.
Pi Day is named for the irrational number, pi. The first three digits of pi are 3.14, so Pi Day is celebrated on March 14. this year the 14th fell on Sunday, so the celebration was held on Friday, March 12 instead.
Students celebrated the week by dressing up for theme days, making pies in some of the classes, creating their class banners, and preparing for the Pi Day Battle. The competition includes grades 7 through 12. “It’s the first time the 7th and 8th graders get to participate in a major school spirit event,” explained Ms. Stonefoot. “They really get into it.” The week leading up to the Pi Day Battle included Circle Day, Similarity Day, Parallel Line Day and Number Day. The theme days were created by the Math Week committee, including Kailyn Bentley, Becky Coburn, Jacob Horstman, Kirsten Milliron, Brenna and Ryan Scully. even the cafeteria staff, led by Sue Gambino, helped the students decorate pi cookies and serve math-themed meals such as Pizza “pi.”
Seventh- through twelfth- graders had the opportunity to go into the elementary classrooms to share some math activities with the younger children. They strung beads with the youngest students. each bead represented a different digit in the expansion of pi. The students then made bracelets from the beads.
The second- and third- grade students learned about circles, diameters and symmetry with paper folding and paint. Fourth and fifth grade students played “pin the radius on the circle” and then had a chance to design their own pi day medals. Sixth-graders had a chance to calculate pi by measuring the actual circumference of various jar lids. More than 40 students volunteered to work with the younger students on these activities. “It’s a great way to integrate basic math ideas into the young students’ lives while they are still at an impressionable age,” commented senior Kirsten Milliron.
On Friday the students, dressed in their class colors, were sent to the gym for the last two instructional periods of the day. They were given only the categories of the events – Art, Knowledge, Endurance, Coordination, Organization, Memory, Attention, Problem Solving, Scavenger Hunt, Teamwork and Appetite in advance. A list of competitors for each event was submitted by each class.
Pandemonium reigned as classmates cheered on their champions. The Art Event required students to draw a cartoon from a painting of famous 17th century French mathematician, L’Hospital. Competitors had to take a test on little known facts about pi in the Knowledge category. The Endurance Test prize was awarded to the student who jumped over an ankle jump rope the longest. In the Coordination Event, students had to work with a partner to bounce various colored balls from the opposing teams out of a parachute while keeping their own colors in. Unscrambling seven anagram puzzles of math words comprised the Organization event. for the Memory event, each class was given the first million digits in pi for one of their classmates to memorize as many as possible. Problem Solving involved a blindfolded student trying to consume a donut tied to the end of a fishing pole. The Scavenger Hunt was a week-long event where students found hidden shapes in various classrooms and then named them at the competition. A relay race of three mathematical components and three silly stunts made up the Teamwork event.
The final event of the Pi Day Battle was the Appetite competition. all week the students speculated which pies they would have to eat this year. They were surprised to find whipped cream filled containers with a whistle at the bottom which had to be blown, no hands. As the students worked their way to the bottoms of their containers, crowds of classmates cheered them on. Due to lack of time, the competitor closest to the bottom was awarded the medal for that event. The overall competition ended in a tie between the 9th and 10th graders.
Lisa Stonefoot, co-founder of the Math Battle, commented, “We have so much fun during this week. we look forward to it every year. it is nice to take a little break from the books and see math in some other places. I think the students really get a lot out of working with the elementary students, and I enjoy seeing them come up with the activities. it is wonderful for them to see that math doesn’t just have to be about books and homework. I don’t know of any other schools in the area that do this.”
Donno Lauzon gave out pie slices after the competition. “We love eating pie,” said Junior Maggie Hammond, even though Ms. Lauzon demands they sing a math related song before they eat. Junior Alex Rymko added, “I’m glad that our school goes all out for Math Week. It’s cool to have something to look forward to, and we can celebrate math.”
Brenna Pilling, a senior, summed the week up this way. “I like the Battle because it gets the whole school involved in fun math activities. Math Week rocks!”
Ripley students learn about Pi with a number of activities
