Middle School Students Celebrate Pi Day

Pi Day, held on 3/14, is a highly anticipated event in the OES Middle School every year. Sixth grade students celebrate the significance of the irrational number pi (π), a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159. Math teachers Karen Seder and Ann von Ofenheim organize the annual event.

This year’s celebration began with the whole sixth grade singing “the Pi Song,” which they had been practicing for weeks, featuring 100 digits of pi. Check out the video. (Thank you to Ashley McCullar, Middle School vocal music teacher, for her work with the students during music class and her piano accompaniment during their performance.)

A friendly competition of pi recitation followed, with the top two or three memorizers from each sixth grade class rattling off their digits in front of the rest of the grade. Congratulations to the winners:

• First place: Jessie Z. ’30 (221 digits) 
• Second place: Anaji N. ’30 (129 digits)
• Third place: Maggie K. ’30  (117 digits)

Kudos also to the other reciters, all from the class of 2030: Isha N., Peyton L., Ava H., Khloe L., Aria S., Coraline A., and Lucy R.

Maggie K. shared that she invented her own song to help her remember an additional 800 digits of pi. An example of one of her stanzas is, “3-3-44-61 we’re nowhere near done.”

After the competition, the students gathered in the Middle School library for a variety of fun pi-related activities, including:

• Researching facts about pi and writing them on pi-shaped posters for the classroom.
• Making a color-coded paper chain where each color stands for a digit of pi (example: blue = 1 and green = 2).
• Creating beaded keychains, where each bead color represents a digit of pi.
• Writing sentences/stories where the number of letters in each word represents a digit of pi. “Ago I walk a heavy alligator to Austin, Texas.” (3.14159265).
• Measuring the actual circumference and diameter of circular objects to discover that value for pi is truly the ratio of the circumference compared to the diameter.

Once they finished their activities, students got to enjoy a piece of pie, brought in by parent volunteers. (Thank you to our bakers and servers!)

Von Ofenheim shared, “I love the passion that the students have around pi. This year, with the Pi Song, more students memorized more digits than ever before. They truly ins-PI-re me!”

Seder said, “I loved the way our sixth graders cheered and supported each other as they recited their digits of pi. They also dove into our more educational activities of the day with almost as much enthusiasm as they brought to eating pi(e)! A special thank you to our parent volunteers who made and served pie.”

*By the way, if you'd like to sing along with “the Pi Song,” here are the lyrics. The song is by AsapScience.

3.14159, this is pi
Followed by 2-6-5-3-5-8-9
Circumference over diameter
7-9, then 3-2-3
O-M-G, can’t you see?
8-4-6-2-6-4-3
And now we’re on a spree

38 and 32, now we’re blue
Oh, who knew?
7,950 and then a 2
88 and 41, so much fun
Now we run
9-7-1-6-9-3-9-9
3-7, 51
Halfway done!

0-5-8, now don’t be late
2-0-9, where’s the wine?
7-4, it’s on the floor
Then 9-4-4-5-9
2-3-0, we gotta go
7-8, we can’t wait
1-6-4-0-6-2-8
We're almost near the end, keep going
62, we're getting through
0-8-9, 9 on time
8-6-2-8-0-3-4
There's only a few more!

8-2, then 5-3
42, 11, 7-0 and 67
We’re done, was that fun?
Learning random digits
So that you can brag to your friends.