Thank You, Benchmarks!

January 24th: The last day we had off
March 28th: Teacher work day
April 18th: Spring break begins
June 9th: Summer break begins...almost there...

I wrote this post at the beginning of January when I thought I was done with "normal" work weeks. We had just gotten back from Christmas break and only had 5 months left of school. Five months, that's nothing. Well, it has been a loooong two months that I think feels like 5 months. Monday we have a teacher work day. I am SO excited! And I am going to be even more excited when April 18th gets here. I know you (Kelly) don't want to hear teachers complain about not having days off. We do get the summers off after all. But, this is not me complaining; this is me just being really excited for a break! It's nice to mix things up every once in a while. Yes, I could take a day off, but it ends up being more work to do that. So, I'll endure three more days and then enjoy my Monday, which I will be taking off. And then, I'll begin my countdown to spring break.

I will say the students have been really good these two months. The summer seems a long way off and there are tough and frustrating days, but overall I really haven't had anything to complain about. I am so thankful everyday that I work with people who enjoy teaching and don't sit around and complain all the time. Schools with teachers who hate their jobs are not fun places to be.

Today and tomorrow are benchmark testing days aka some of the best school days ever for teachers. I won't get on a rant about standardized testing and how ineffective and inaccurate they are. I will take my hour and a half of planning in the morning and then the silence of 20 students testing for two hours after that and will get a ton of work done. And then, I will enjoy my weekend and not spend it planning lessons! Today, I will be grateful for these crazy tests as I am tired and ready for my day off. Next week, when I am called in to the principal's office to discuss why my students aren't proficient on these tests, I will not be so grateful. Until then...blissful silence...

and then there were these...

I really hate pi

I am really scared of pi

I ate you. Ha ha!

NB

Pi, you equal three

One four and you make my core

Sore and want some more

AL

Pie you are so good

I like you in the morning

You bring out my hood

TW

Pi-ku or Pie-ku??

Pie or pi, which one??

Pie is creamy and yummy

Numbers are in pi

DK

Pi, you're a letter

You are also a number

But, I like pie too!

JT

I like pies sooo much

Apple and key lime are good

Yummy yummy yum

TO

You confuse me, pi

I like the pie you can eat

I don't like you, pi

IC

Pi is a number

The biggest number ever

It really tastes good

JO

One pie tastes real good

The other is an number

Why can't they combine?

BH

A Pi-em

3 - Pi is large
1 - Number
4 - That's what it is
1 - Circle
5 - Is what it goes with
9 - It is the circumference divided by the diameter
2 - It's pi
6 - A very, very large mathematical number
CR

3 - No taste! Weird
1 - Numbers?
4 - Why aren't you yummy?
1 - 3.14?
5 - Pie comes in many flavors
9 - Blueberry, Pumpkin, Apple, Cherry, so very, very, very good!
2 - Not you!
6 - All I see are infinite numbers.
5 - Your crust isn't browned and...
3 - You are weird.
5 - Instead of filled with flavor,
8 - You are filled with MANY numbers to come
9 - Pi, you are very different; one of a kind.
BE

A Few Pi-Kus

Pi is very strange

A long and odd decimal

Has more than one use

DK

Pi you can not eat

You are only a number

But you are cool!

DO

Pi is really long

You seem to go on and on

Pi is a cool number

TC

Pi three point one four

Is a never ending thing

No, not that pie, man!

MR

Hi, Pi, how are you?

You've been very hard to find.

You're one of a kind.

KM

You're three point one four

But you equal a lot more

Pi, that is your score

ET

Happy Pi Day

3.14 aka March 14th is pi day. What kind of math teacher would I be without a full day of pi celebration today?

Most of my classes began with students asking, "Who's birthday is it?" Or "What's pee day?"

We had a lot to learn! We started off watching this catchy little jingle.

Then, we talked about the history of pi, which was originally called Ludolphin after the guy who was able to theoretically calculate pi to 35 decimal places using a method called "squaring the circle." In 1949, a computer calculated pi to 2037 decimal places. It took that computer 70 hours to do that. 70 hours...that's crazy. Then, just six short years later, in 1955, a computer calculated pi to 3089 decimal places in 13 minutes. In six years, the computer was able to calculate an irrational number to over 3000 decimal places in a fraction of the time it took it to do 2000 places. Even more impressive than that is that in 1997 two people calculated pi to 51,539,600,000 decimal places! That's over 51 billion. Just in case you're not completely bored out of your mind, you can look at the first 100,000 decimal places here.

After we talked about the history of pi, we got to eat some pie. But, not until we tried to calculate pi first. We measured the circumference and diameter of oatmeal cream pies and then divided the two: C/D. Some students got very close to pi and some not so much. No one could get exactly pi because you have to have a perfect circle and perfect measurements to get the exact ratio, which is not possible with oatmeal cream pies and human measurement. But, the snack was yummy!

Then, we read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi, a cute story about a boy who discovers pi as he tries to solve a riddle to save his father who drank a potion that turned him into a dragon.

We ended the class by writing poems about pi. My students could choose between a pi-ku (haiku all about pi) or a pi-em (poem using the numbers of pi). With the pi-ku, students had to have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and finally, 5 syllables in the last line. If they chose to do the pi-em, their first line had to have three words, second line had to have one word, third line had to have four words, etc. I was really impressed with what some of them came up with. Some wrote more about pie than pi, but I let it count. I'll post some of their poems later this week so stay tuned!

HAPPY PI DAY, EVERYONE!

What Not to Wear

Monday afternoon I was talking to my 5th period class about their weekend. One boy was telling me how he went to the Tanger Outlets and got some new Converses at the Converse store. Lately, Stephen and I have been joking about wearing converses in out wedding. I would want yellow ones to wear under my dress. So, I asked this student if the store had yellow converses. One of my girls heard me asking about yellow converses and came over to show me hers. My first mistake was asking her if her's were real converses. She replied, "pshht, Ms. Hemric, I don't wear fake stuff." Well, excuse me... I then explained that I was thinking about wearing converses in my wedding. This was mistake number two to the one hundredth power. You would have thought I said I was going to kill my dog or something the way she began to freak out about how absurd that thought was. She told me that I ABSOLUTELY could NOT wear converses under my wedding dress. She called her three best friends in the class over to tell them how crazy I was.
"Can you believe Ms. Hemric wants to wear converses under her wedding dress?!?!"
"WHAT?!?"
"Ms. Hemric, no way!"
"You need some heels."
"No, you have to wear stilettos under your dress."
I told them I was not wearing heels or stilettos because I did not want my feet to hurt all day. I explained that I was more than likely going to wear yellow flats. This calmed them down a lot. They were fine with the yellow flats. I was glad to get that settled. They were about ready to call in the fashion police on me.

Later in the week, I asked one boy to sit up and pay attention. His response?
"Ms. Hemric, can't you see my heart is breaking??" Clearly, I had missed the memo.