Take a Bite Out of These Pi Day Activities
Calling all teachers! Are you looking for fun and exciting ways to bring more literacy skills, content knowledge, and cross-curricular lessons into your classrooms? It’s easier than you might think, especially when there’s a math-themed holiday on the calendar. We’ve curated a text set full of Pi Day activities to help you address skills like building background knowledge during your math lessons or adding math topics in your social studies classroom. Plus, specifically for math teachers, we’ll give you tips on how to use Formative to create interactive, engaging math lessons all school year:
Build background knowledge about Pi Day
Help students explore the history of Pi Day and some of the roles numbers and math play in our lives. Newsela Social Studies has great resources for your students, like:
What is Pi Day?
What is Pi Day and why do we celebrate it? Help students learn the significance of this holiday that’s been around for over 30 years, and became recognized as a national holiday in 2009. Use resources like articles or interactive videos (or both!) to help students answer questions like:
Who created Pi Day?
Where and when did the first Pi Day celebration take place?
What are infinite numbers, and is pi one of them?
Where does pi get its name and its symbol?
How do people celebrate Pi Day?
Do people really eat pie on Pi Day?
When you teach about Pi Day with Newsela Social Studies resources, you can use the quiz question prompts in the video to assess student understanding as they watch. In the article, you can use various scaffolding and assessment tools to help students understand the content and check for understanding during and after reading. Some scaffolds and activities available with this article include:
Annotations
Student polls
Write prompts
Embedded quizzes
Power Words
Is pi really 3.14?
Why does anybody celebrate Pi Day in the first place? Because for centuries, mathematicians and scientists have searched for the most accurate value of the constant and irrational number represented by that familiar symbol, 𝝅. Teach students more about the mathematical applications of pi, such as:
Formulas that use this constant in their calculations
Earliest known estimates of pi (Hint! They weren’t 3.14!)
Ways scientists and mathematicians of the past calculated pi before digital calculators existed
Ways you can calculate pi today if you don’t have a calculator handy
Use flexible student activities on Newsela Social Studies to bring this lesson into any classroom! Choose from comprehension checks and other assessment options in the form of:
Writing prompts
Student polls
Embedded quizzes
Annotations
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Are you celebrating pi or pie?
Your students may be disappointed to learn that Pi Day has nothing to do with one of their favorite desserts. But you can use articles and a pie of your choice to help them better understand the math concepts connected to pi. Discuss topics like:
How can pi help calculate the circumference and diameter of a circle (the shape of a pie!)?
Is it impossible to calculate all the digits of pi?
Is pi the superior constant or is tau better for measuring circles?
With Newsela Social Studies, you can choose from a variety of ways to share this information in class, such as presenting it for whole-group instruction, assigning it to individual students or groups, or encouraging students to follow along individually or in small groups. Plus, you can try a premade Formative interactive activity created especially for Pi Day to pair with the great articles and videos included in the text set.
Create engaging, interactive Pi Day math activities
Whether you teach math all year long or you want to add an assignment to spice up your Pi Day activities in another subject, you can create and assign your own interactive math activities on Formative. By using all of the tool’s amazing math features you can help students practice using pi and assess what they’ve learned:
Have students show their work on math problems
Toggle on the show your work setting on any Formative activity you create for your math class. This setting allows students to show all the steps it takes to solve each problem within the program. Teachers can then follow a student’s thought process while solving the problem, like using pi to find the circumference of a circle, and even watch them work on it in real time and provide support and guidance in the moment!
Use Formative’s built-in math keyboard and calculators for easy problem-solving
Solving problems in Formative is even more accessible thanks to the built-in math keyboard that you can add to any activity. It allows students to type numbers, equations, and even symbols like pi with ease. Plus, teachers who have Silver and Gold plans can let students access basic, scientific, and graphing calculators from right within their assignments to solve problems without ever leaving Formative.
Browse the Formative library to find interactive math activities created by other educators
Need help to kickstart your Pi Day lessons? Visit the Formative shared library to browse community-generated quizzes, bell ringers, and other formative assessments for all grade levels. Use the search feature and filters to find ones that meet your needs and state standards.
Calculate what else Formative can do in the classroom
Creating interactive math activities for your classroom isn’t the only thing you can do with Formative! Discover all Formative has to offer for daily instruction, departmental collaboration, and district-wide common assessment across science, ELA, social studies, world language, and many more subjects!