Today is the third Pi Day. In some years, the 314th day of the year is November 10th, but this year it is November 9th because of February 29th. This is what I wrote last year about third Pi Day:
Hold on a minute! You probably thought that Pi Day was on March 14th -- and the date on which this blog was launched was Pi Approximation Day, July 22nd. So how can November 10th be yet another Pi Day?
Well, November 10th is the 314th day of the year. And so some people have declared the day to be a third Pi Day.
I like the idea of a third Pi Day, based on the ordinal date (where January 1 = 1, November 10 = 314, and December 31 = 365). As the author at the above link pointed out, the three Pi Days are nearly equally spaced throughout the year. So I can celebrate Pi Day every fourth month.
I wouldn't mention the third Pi Day in a classroom, unless I was at a school that was on a 4x4 block schedule, where a student may take math first semester and then have absolutely no math class in the second semester (when the original Pi Day occurs). The only chance a student has to celebrate Pi Day would be the November Pi Day. (Likewise, the second Pi Day -- July 22nd -- may be convenient for a summer school class.)
Both November 10th [or 9th] and March 14th suffer from falling near the ends of trimesters or quarters (depending on whether the school started in August or after Labor Day). Classes may be too busy with trimester or quarter tests to have any sort of Pi Day party.
At home, I like to celebrate and eat pie for all three Pi Days. The pie that I choose is the pie most associated with the season in which that Pi Day occurs. Today, I will eat either pumpkin or sweet potato pie due to its proximity to Thanksgiving. On Pi Approximation Day, I ate apple pie, since it occurs right after the Fourth of July, a date as American as apple pie. And for the original Pi Day in March, I eat cherry pie -- the National Cherry Blossom Festival usually occurs between a week and a month after Pi Day.
Returning to the present, notice that my period of mourning for my late uncle is over. The black background is gone, and so I've randomly chosen a new blog background.
I could have celebrated third Pi Day at my current school today, as I know that the regular teacher will return in January (and hence before first Pi Day, March 14th). But of course I didn't -- serving pie in the classroom is awkward due to the pandemic.
Indeed, the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on school calendars this year. Notice my mention of 4x4 block calendars in last year's post -- and now this year, one of my districts has implemented a 4x4-like calendar due to the pandemic. But that district is in LA County, where there is still full distance learning, so definitely no pie will be served.
And I don't purchase any pumpkin pie at home today either. It's been getting more difficult to find individual pumpkin pies these last few years. I did eat some special sweet foods today, including some cinnamon-flavored fries and lemon-flavored popcorn, but neither is any sort of pie. I also ate some chicken wings, as today is the first day on my special Eleven Calendar.
Another obstacle to celebrating third Pi Day in the classroom -- even in a regular non-pandemic year -- is Veteran's Day. Recall that here in California, Veteran's Day is on November 11th no matter what day of the week this is. But when the 11th falls on the weekend, the holiday is sometimes observed on the 10th, thereby increasing the likelihood that school is closed on third Pi Day.
Speaking of Vets Day, notice that the holiday falls on a Wednesday this year. When I first wrote about hybrid school schedules in my Pi Approximation Day post, I warned that the Wednesday holiday might be problematic for the hybrid schedule -- and indeed it is. Only certain students attend school on Wednesdays, and so observing the holiday means that the schedule would be unequal for the two cohorts unless something else changes. (At the time I posted this, I wasn't sure whether any schools would even reopen by Veteran's Day -- if none did, then this hybrid problem becomes a moot point.)
Unfortunately, the leaders at my school didn't notice this until last month. At a leadership meeting, they decided to do what most other schools with block schedules (A/B that is, not 4x4) do when a holiday falls on a day other than Monday -- instead of being an all-classes day, Monday takes on the schedule of the missing day, in this case Wednesday. This also means that, whereas most Mondays are full distance learning with a Late Start, today is neither. Instead, the Wednesday-Friday cohort attends their odd classes in person today, beginning at the usual (not Late Start) time. And since this is a four-day school week (just like last week), I see each student only once this week, in person.
Also, today was originally going to be the monthly minimum day. Recall that minimum days are scheduled for Mondays, when it's all distance learning and it's Late Start anyway. But as soon as leadership realized the Veteran's Day error, the minimum day was delayed to next week.
In the classroom, I don't bring up third Pi Day today. But two of my seventh grade boys unwittingly mention pi today, even though they haven't officially learned it yet. For some reason, one of them started talking about pi, and the other started reciting some of its digits. They are posted on the back wall, but a few are missing, having apparently fallen off the wall well before my arrival. I tell them that they will officially learn about pi after the regular teacher returns (but before Pi Day).
But that's all I have to say about my seventh graders today -- since today is like a Wednesday at school, I should also follow my Wednesday blogging schedule and write about eighth grade today.
This week, the eighth graders are taking their Unit 3 Test. There is a practice test on Go Formative, and so I go over a few questions before we start the test. As we've already seen, these students are struggling mightily with slope and linear functions. While some students excel on today's test, many other students just barely scrape by. I'm definitely worried about the fourth period special ed students who will take the test on Thursday and Friday.
After today's test, there are two worksheets to introduce Unit 4 on Edpuzzles. But this time, the regular teacher has already set up the assignment for me -- and indeed, in Canvas, he set up the worksheets to be due this upcoming Monday for a grade.
Recall my discussion of the Unit 3 slope worksheet. I had graded that one harshly for accuracy -- but as it turns out, my grading didn't matter. I mentioned earlier that Math 8 (unlike Math 7) uses weighted grading in Canvas, with three categories ("APEX quizzes," "APEX tests," "Assignments") each worth 30-40% of the total grade. Well, as it turned out, the slope worksheet was considered by Canvas to be an "Imported Assignment" -- and this category is worth 0% of the grade, and so it doesn't count squat.
I'm still not completely familiar with Canvas, and so I won't know whether these Edpuzzles will count as "Assignments" or "Imported Assigments" until after next week's due date and I start entering actual grades for them. If they count as real grades in "Assignments," then it might be a good idea to grade one of them for completion and the other for accuracy. Grading them both for completion might artificially inflate the grades (since I'd be giving everyone 100% for 30-40% of their grade), while grading them for accuracy might artificially lower their grades.
I ordinarily don't have music break on Mondays, but since students had 100-minute in-person classes today (like an ordinary Wednesday), I should sing today -- and I do. This has been an open week for songs -- all of October was for Square One TV songs, and last week was my Election Day song. And so this was the week I had circled on my calendar for writing a new original song.
It took me some time for me to decide what song to compose and perform. Since it's third Pi Day, I could have chosen an established Pi Day parody. I also could have honored the late great Alex Trebek, who passed away yesterday, and wrote a parody based on the Jeopardy! theme song. (Actually, I should save that idea for a day when there's a Jeopardy! activity in the class I'm teaching.) But instead, I decided to write a purely original song.
In some ways, this is an unlikely time to try to write a new song -- ordinarily, I'd have all weekend to write a song by Tuesday, the first day that I usually perform. But with the schedule change this week, I needed the new song ready by today. Still, I've been waiting to compose a song ever since I arrived at this school, and so I did it anyway despite losing a day.
Because this is my seventh week at this school, I decided to honor the seventh grade. Their Unit 3 is about multiplying and dividing signed numbers -- and since I already have a song about adding signed numbers, I might as well have one about multiplying and dividing them. (And the song might help eighth graders -- with their need to simplify division in the slope formula -- to boot.)
Here are the lyrics:
First Verse:
Whenever you multiply,
Numbers with sign.
Remember these rules,
And then you'll be fine.
Refrain:
Different signs negative,
Negative sign.
Same signs are positive,
Positive sign.
Second verse:
Whenever you must divide,
Numbers with sign.
Above and below,
The fraction bar line. (To Refrain)
I like taking advantage of a song's structure (refrains and bridges) to teach some math. Since both multiplication and division have the same rules, I repeat the refrain (about different and same signs) after both the multiplication and division verses. Previous songs where I take advantage of structure include "Quadratic Weasel" (where I added the bridge and mentioned the parabola vertex formula) and "Solve It" (a cumulative song that covers one-, two-, and multi-step equations).
For the tune, I decide to run the COMPOSE program that I wrote on the TI over the summer. I choose 18EDL (even though I don't have an 18EDL guitar, at least not yet), 2/4 time, and six bars. This code randomly produces a list of numbers that I place directly into the DATA lines on Mocha (the instrument that actually plays 18EDL music).
I'll have more to say about 18EDL music in general (in particular, how to get from the generated list of numbers to chords played on the guitar) in another post very soon. But I will say a few things about the tune that I generated for today's class.
Recall that in 18EDL, Degree 18 is the tonic, Degree 15 is a minor (green) third, and Degree 14 is a supermajor (red) third. Thus a song based on 18EDL could sound major or minor. It turns out that my generated code emphasizes Degree 15 at the expense of 14, and so my song sounds minor.
I wrote earlier that I would normally like to play our generated music in the key of G -- but this mainly refers to G major, not G minor. Notice that in standard tuning, G minor isn't considered to be an open chord -- G major takes advantage of the open B string, but G minor can't.
But in our EACGAE tuning, there is no open B. Thus G minor suddenly becomes a playable chord -- if G major (or G/D) is fingered as xx2023, then G minor (or Gm/D) is fingered as xx2013. (But notice that on a true 18 EDL-fretted guitar, the first finger would finger "suyo A#" on the second string -- which is not equivalent to "green Bb" fingered on the third string.)
Then again, I mentioned the problems I had with my D string last week. This is the string with the broken tuning knob -- and even though it sounds credible as an open C string, for some reason it's slightly sharp when I try to finger it at the second fret as D. My solution is the same as last week -- instead of Gm/D, I play only G-Bb-G on the top three strings.
And the other chords I play are designed to mask the problems I have with the D string. In addition to this mini-Gm chord, I also play the C and F chords, and save the dominant D7 chord (which would force me to play that out-of-tune D) for only once in the refrain -- the final cadence D7-Gm.
I usually post a video every Pi Day, including third Pi Day. This year, I post a Numberphile video about a number trick involving pi and calculators. It's one of the videos Numberphile posted during the early days of the pandemic, and I watched it because I had nothing else to do that day:
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