Today, 14 March, the College – and particularly the Mathematics Department – celebrated International Pi Day.
This year saw the Year 7-10s take part in a couple of different activities over the course of the day, providing an opportunity to use their maths outside the regular classroom. The aim of the activities is for all students to be able to participate fully, and as such, they are not mathematical intensive activities. The focus is more on developing students problem-solving and teamwork skills as well as having some fun together.
This year the Year 9 and 10s used their artistic flair to create mandalas – round symmetrical designs based around a series of circles and patterns, as complicated as each student desired. Interestingly, the most challenging thing for students was working out how to use a compass to draw neat and round circles!
It was great to see students relaxing and talking together while working on their masterpieces, and might I just say there are some talented artists at the College.
The Year 7-8s took part in some (mostly) friendly competition in creating paper chains.
Sounds simple I hear you say! Well it wasn’t quite that simple. The paper chains represented the number Pi (3.14159…) with each number being a different colour and length – something the students needed to work out. It was great to see the different approaches taken by each group, some more effective than others.
In the end some groups made some quite impressive and long chains, how long exactly rather dependent on the degree of teamwork. Well done to Tyndale who won the longest chain for both the Year 7s and Year 8s.
A big thanks goes to Miss Smoker for organising the activities as well as to all of the students who took part on the day and made the activities what they were.
