3.14 and the correlation with the celebration of Maths Day
The 14th of March is one of those peculiar days in the calendar. If you are to follow the American date format, it can be read as 3.14, which happens to be the first 3 digits of Pi - possibly the most intriguing math symbol taught in schools around the world. The 14th of March (or Pi day, as it has been referred to since 1988) is important for many other reasons: it was on this date, in 1879, Ulm Germany, that the world-renowned physicist and intellectual thinker Albert Einstein was born; in 1995, humanity celebrated an important date in space history as they managed to launch 13 individuals into Earth's orbit at the same time (a collaborative endeavour, which took a combined effort of NASA's shuttles, the Mir Space Station and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to achieve); most recently - and possibly most notably - the 14th of March 2022 was the day that St Julian's Primary School hosted their Maths Day, an incredibly successful event.
Students from Nursery all the way up until Year 3 entered the school on this day dressed in maths-themed fancy dress and flowed through the corridors of St Julian’s in a variety of guises.
There were many creative costumes to be seen, from children dressed up as math superheroes, mini Albert Einstein’s and even human-sized dice! It was a sight to behold. These age groups were introduced to the day before having a fashion parade around their classes to show off their creative outfits. At the same time, Year 4 to Year 6, were taking part in maths-themed t-shirt design competitions, the result of which was voted on by the whole Primary School.
All-day, students took part in a variety of maths-related activities. The St Julian’s specialists, as well as some key members of the Secondary School team, set up and ran a series of outdoor stations with interactive tasks. These were all phenomenally successful with our students, who could be seen flying paper aeroplanes, launching rockets, sprinting short distances, creating musical rhythms and much, much more - all activities linking to and evoking their excellent maths skills.
In their classrooms, our teachers and teaching assistants set up whole-class maths activities where students worked collaboratively to solve exciting problems. And there were quite a few impactful ones…. Year 3 applied their fractions and measuring skills by setting their hands to cooking, creating delicious pizzas in the school canteen. Our Year 5 and 4º ano staged an escape room in each classroom, where the children (trapped by their teaching assistants, who had had enough of them not applying their problem-solving skills independently) had to solve a series of problems in order to unlock various padlocks, leading them to the ultimate key to escape!
As the day progressed, we welcomed a variety of virtual visitors into the children’s classrooms, many of which were from our parent community. This was an enriching experience for the children, as many visitors explained how they used their maths learnt at school in their day-to-day jobs. The visits allowed children to engage with a range of exciting activities, photos, props, videos and much more, and also respond to questions relating to the maths in their work. Our visitors came from a variety of backgrounds, we had pilots, sailors, youtubers, bankers, business owners - all with one thing in common, MATHS!
The Primary Staff had planned this special event with the purpose being to raise the profile of mathematics in our learning community, and to help students make connections between maths in the classroom and maths in the world.
We felt an exciting buzz of energy around the school all day! And we are sure students understand: maths is everywhere!
Ciaran Finnegan
Primary Teacher and Maths Lead for KS2
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