Pi Day Fun in the Upper Elementary Classroom

Have you ever thought about celebrating Pi Day on March 14 (3/14)?  Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th because that day corresponds with the first three digits of Pi (and is coincidentally the birthday of Albert Einstein).

Although it is traditionally celebrated by many middle school and high school teachers, I have found that my students always have an amazing time learning about Pi even if they can't quite calculate it themselves yet!  Read on to see all of the things we do to celebrate Pi in the Upper Elementary Classroom!

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Wear Pi

One fun thing about holidays is dressing up to celebrate them.  Why should Pi Day be any different?

I bought this Pi-Day shirt from Amazon here.

My students were also able to wear Pi with these awesome temporary Pi Day tattoos.

Math Jokes  

I print out some of the math jokes in this post, " 36 Math Jokes to Get Every Nerd Through Pi Day", and we share them throughout the day.  My students LOVE them, even the cornier jokes! 

I usually give each student a joke and randomly call on them throughout the day to read them out loud to the class.

Pi Day Read Aloud

My favorite read aloud for Pi Day is Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.  

The book is a math themed adventure where the title character, Sir Cumference is changed into a fire breathing dragon, and his son, Radius is on a quest to change him back.  In order to do this, he must solve a riddle where he discovers a math number that is the same for all circles - Pi!

After your read aloud, you can pass out these adorable Pi Day Bookmarks to your students to use in their own books!

How Many Digits Are in Pi?

My students were so fascinated by this Pi Measuring Tape.  It features the first 400 digits of Pi. They couldn't believe a number could be so long!  

Pi Day Book

We completed these adorable Pi Day books that taught us even more about Pi!

Pi Day Vocabulary

We learned a few Pi related vocabulary words!  

Let Them Eat Pie!    

What Pi Day Celebration would be complete without pie?  We had to end the day with some yummy apple pie!

Do you celebrate Pi Day in your classroom?  I'd love to hear about it!  Leave a comment below!

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 I would love to hear from you! ❤️

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Descriptive Writing Mini-Lesson - Gary Hogg Author Visit

Do you wish your students wrote more descriptively?  Is their writing rather ho-hum and boring?  You might want to try this descriptive writing mini- lesson based on a recent Gary Hogg author visit.  You will be amazed at how descriptive their writing will be!

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.  

Our school was lucky enough to have an author visit from Gary Hogg.  In addition to his whole school assemblies, he also provided writer's workshops for some of our students.  You can get a brief taste of what he shared in this video below:

During the assembly, he mentioned to the students that they needed to use their author's voice.  I was so impressed with my students' author voices after this quick mini-lesson with Gary.

Gary told the students that authors think twice.  He further explained, sometimes authors use a word that is really a category, but it is not really descriptive.  Examples he gave for categories were ice-cream, dogs, and colors.  He told the students that authors looked back at their writing for categories and made them details instead.  Examples of details might be: mint chocolate ice cream, a feisty puppy, or sea foam green.

He had the students practice turning categories into details.  You can see a video of this below where he asks the students to give details about dogs.

Since his visit, I have been using this idea as a warm-up from time to time during writer's workshop to get the students really thinking about details.

After this little warm-up he told them that he was going to have them write for 5 minutes.  He had them close their eyes and think of a memory.  He reminded them to think in details rather than categories.  He played a really funky machine that made music as the students thought.  Then he had them put pencil to paper.

You can watch a video of a similar lesson here:

My students were amazed at how much they wrote in only 5 minutes (to be honest, so was I)!

When the 5 minutes were up, he had them draw a line underneath the writing that they had so far.  Then he told them that writers:

Write

Revise

Repeat

He asked them to go back into their writing to find places where they had categories and change them to details.  He told them to write "smart bubbles" below their writing with arrows pointing to where they wanted to add it to the writing.  

To get them really thinking, he asked questions such as:

What day?

Was it morning/afternoon/night?

What was the weather like?

What is your mom's name?

What words could you use to describe your mom.

Where were you at?

Here is an example of a student's writing after answering these questions.

My students were so engaged in revising!  How does this even happen?

Samples of my students' writing:

If you want to find more about Gary Hogg, check out his website and his YouTube page!

If you try this lesson in your classroom, I would love to see pictures!  

Please email me at kellys3ps@sbcglobal.net or tag me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter!

And... before you go, make sure to visit my Giveaways page to enter our weekly giveaway to win a $25 Teachers pay Teachers gift card!

 I would love to hear from you! ❤️

Have a question? Idea for a resource you might find helpful?

Be so kind and leave a comment below.