On Sunday, I read and the filed away Grace’s post on Pi-ku poetry. That’s haiku for Pi Day. It was too brilliant to not bring it to my 6th graders.
I think I’ve mentioned that I teach gifted 6th graders. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when a hand when up at my list of the digits of pi to the 11th decimal place:
3.14159265359
“Ms. Gillespie, I think it should be 8 then 9 at the end,” said a student who at 12 is a better mathematician than I will ever be. Heck, most of my students will go on to do Math coursework beyond my comprehension. But, I am the adult in the room and I do actually possess some mathematical knowledge. In fact the Math I know, I know with confidence.
“What’s the rule about rounding if the next digit is 5 or greater?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” responded the student and a few others nodded as my heart swelled.
It was a great Pi Day Eve.
booksandbassets 
Oh my goodness, I sometimes dream of teaching gifted kids, how very fortunate you are! I have not the vaguest clue what you are writing about, but it sounds magnificent!!
Shows your students are thinking. I never did anything special with my students on pi day. Right now I can only thing of celebrating this day with a nice slice of blueberry crumb pie.
How great that someone would notice the mistake in a number that long! I certainly would not have.
I’ll have to check out the Pi-ku poetry. Thanks for sharing this, and Happy Pi Day to you!
We had fun with Pi today too. We beaded bracelets using colors for eac digit in Pi. Then we wrote a quick Pi poem. First line, 3 words. Second line, one word. Third line, 4 words, etc.
Amusing tale. I suppose the pi expert could’ve opted for a 13-line poem (or longer) instead, but that decision might be called irrational!