NCTM Article and Evaluation #2

Daire S.A.(2010). Celebrating Mathematics All Year ’Round. Mathematics Teacher, vol 103(7), 509.

The main idea of this article was getting students involved and excited about mathematics. All it took was a simple article to spark an idea into a teacher who turned a high school into a math learning environment. In this article, Daire, took an idea from an article titled "Pi Day" (Waldner 1994), and started a celebration of the number Pi. It began within Daire's classroom celebrating pi day on the 14th of March. They made T-shirts with Pi designs on it. Something like, "wearing a “What’s your sine?” shirt with a graph that had p as an x-intercept intrigued my students," Daire observed that the shirt created opportunities to learn. As more participation came from students, a one day a year celebration turned into a weed long celebration. Then there came the whole school involvement, where there were questions posted outside the classroom for anyone to solve and win prizes like a graphing calculator, candy and T-shirts and stuff. This began "opening the door to a world of mathematics that [students] did not know existed."
As more and more participation came, the one week celebration turned into a year long celebration where pi was celebrated during major holidays like Halloween, Valentines, etc.
The principal allowed students to wear math themed t-shirts on March 14. "The ceramics teacher encouraged students to make pi art. The media center offered its display case to showcase an array of mathematics books, posters, student-made ceramics, and even songs that celebrate mathematics. And the custodians became accustomed to hallways covered with student-made digits of pi." Due to this involvement, the school's state test scores were significantly higher than other schools.

It's interesting to me that a simple article title with an imagination can spark an interest in so many students and create a math learning environment for everyone. I think that it is a great idea to tie in celebration to math learning because I feel that people learn best while having fun. And adding a little competition with actual prizes gives, considering that these students were from less financially stable families, gave them more incentive to participate and in doing so gave them a learning opportunity.