Year 9 Pi-ems

Here's my finished Year 9 Pi-em display...

 



The Pi-ems that the class produced are absolutely brilliant! They're also completely bonkers in parts due to the complexity of the task I gave them, but this is what I like about them. For more on how the Pi-em works and what it is then see my previous blog post here.

Pi-em (100 word h/w)

Earlier this week I set my Year 9 top set a homework task involving Pi.

The homework was to create a Pi-em; a poem/story where the numbers in each of the words correspond to the first 100 digits of Pi.
We have been looking at area and circumferences of circles in class and so this seemed like an original homework to give them. Not only will it help them in terms of remembering Pi (not necessarily to 100 decimal places), but it will also improve their literacy skills, of which there is a whole school wide push this year.

So, I combined the Pi-em challenge with the 100 word challenge that I am a big fan of and do weekly in tutor times with my year 8 form (see http://100wc.net)

Their homework isn't due in until Friday but I've already had a few of them handed in, here's one that has already been submitted...

She, a fool? A moron? Sanctuary is surely right for souls fighting, murdering, killing. Perfectly, for it can beautify, home sticks in hearts, like she can remember, and it rotates. Enlighten those he replaces creation with a clockwork machine. A single influence and creations regularly ban person’s lives. I speak external; an alligator battles with inanimate, huge logs. Hives, naturally an ant attacks a lively hive, forget to remember ratios. “Yo!” splutter centipede policemen. Rainbows tickle my Achilles. Ham can’t discover my hares. But joke’s on a-a penguin rapper. Rolling defiantly.

 

Here's the first 100 digits of Pi

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164 062862089986280348253421170679

As you can see from the Pi-em above the 1st word contains 3 letters, the 2nd word contains 1 letter, the 3rd word contains 4 letters, the 4th word contains 1 letter and so on...

I love the randomness of the pieces of writing that I've had in so far. Having provided the class of an example myself I know how difficult it is trying to think of 8 letter words or 6 letter words that somehow fit the story/poem that you are writing. This not only gets the students to look up these length words but also gets them thinking about how they can make their stories/poems make some sort of sense.

Oh, one last thing, with the 0 digits I told the class to either leave them out or to just use 'O' for those digits.

I'm planning on making a Pi-em display in my classroom once I've had them all handed in! More to come...

Class blog and the '100 Word Challenge'

At the start of the year I decided to set up a class blog that I would, initially, use with my Year 8 tutor group.

The main purpose of this blog would be to share my form group's work and to share with them useful information throughout the school year. A large part of the blog involves my form taking part in the 100 word challenge (see http://100wc.net). The 100 word challenge is a weekly activity for students to take part in that involves them writing a 100 word piece of writing around the weekly 'prompt' that is put up on the website.
I was unsure at first as to how my tutor group would take to the idea, but have been massively impressed with how much they seem to be engaging in the process.

Each Wednesday evening the 100 word challenge website posts the 'prompt' for that week, then on Thursday, during tutor time, I show the class the website, the prompt and then get them to start writing their 100 words in our 20 minute tutor time. Then, at the end of the 20 minutes if they have finished their writing and want it to be put up on the blog (they don't have to have it published on the blog if they don't want) they hand it to me and I post it for them later that day. If they would like more time to work on it, or they want to type it up themselves, they then e-mail me their entry later in the week. This is easier for me too as it means I just have to copy and paste their work into the blog post creator.

From an initial point of view everything posted on the site is going through me, whilst I ensure all the e-safety elements are checked and the students get used to the process. Eventually, I will try and set up a universal 'student' logon for them to all have and then post when they've done the challenges. I can still moderate everything posted by that account and so will still be able to ensure there is nothing that shouldn't be posted on the blog.

We have now done the 100 word challenge for the 1st 2 weeks (the activity is still in week 2) and at least 7 or 8 students have posted each week, there is a buzz about the room when we talk about the blog and many students are asking me if I've seen the comments they've had on their work from other people.
This, in my opinion, is the best thing about the 100 word challenge. After I have linked each of my student's work to the 100wc site the 100 word challenge team (and other students/teachers) then comment on the work completed. They give constructive feedback on the work and highlight areas in which the students may improve their writing. This, for not only the students, but my new school, is a massive thing this year as there is a whole school literacy push. This includes having a 'word of the week' feature in each week's tutor times; I am also posting this on the blog and giving away VIVOs (our awards system) for the first student to comment on the post with a sentence using the word of the week.

I'm planning on 'showcasing' the blog to the rest of the school soon, once I have plenty of evidence as to the usefulness of it, the student's engagement in it and the ways in which it can develop students' literacy. Part of this will involve me explaining that I have said to students that in their writing they are not to mention the school, their full name or names of other students etc etc. I also have on the blog a whole menu devoted to e-safety and have provided loads of links for students and parents if they are experiencing problems with online safety, cyberbullying etc. I hope this will also form a part of tutor time later in the year where I can discuss with the students being safe online, refer to links on the blog and discuss these further.

Here's the class blog... http://mrcollinsclassblog.wordpress.com if you'd like to comment on any of the students' work then that'd be great, they love the comments they've received so far and this is helping massively to engage them in using the blog and completing the 100 word challenge.

This week I even had a student e-mail me on Wednesday after school saying that they'd been on the 100 word challenge website, seen the new prompt and asked if they could start their 100 word piece of writing early. I, of course, said yes and then within 10 minutes had an e-mail with a word doc attached containing their entry, it went straight on the blog and was then used as an example for the other students in Thursday's tutor time!

Class Blog

This year I'm going to be experimenting with a new class blog.

I'm going to mainly use the blog with my new year 8 form group, but may also use the blog to put up some of my student's work in my Mathematics lessons too. It all really depends on how the students take to the idea initially and the worth in doing so.

So, I have set up a new blog for my tutor group to start with. I will mainly use the blog initially to get the tutor group practising their creative writing by taking part in the 100 Word Challenge on http://100wc.net. I am a big fan of the site and the 100 word challenge and want to do this once a week with my form group following the weekly prompts put on the site. I will encourage my form to write their own 100 word pieces in form time and then get them to either hand them into me to put on the blog, type them up at home and then e-mail to me to put on the blog/post on the blog themselves.

I will be giving my form group a QR Code/URL of the class blog site in our 1st session together and then we'll be practising with a 100 word challenge that we'll generate the words for together in our 1st tutor session. This will hopefully get the class used to: the layout of the blog, the idea behind the 100 word challenge and read all the info/links I've loaded onto the blog so far. I also intend to ring parents at the end of this week to introduce myself to them as their child's new form tutor and will mention the blog then and ask if their child has said anything about. This will give me a chance to answer any questions they may have and direct their attention to the E-Safety page on the blog.

Knowing full well about the issues around child safety when online I have made a point of having a strong focus on E-Safety on the blog and have a whole separate page on the topic with loads of links for both students and parents to sites on cyberbulling and e-safety. I am sure that I will be mentioning this to my students throughout the year too as the use of social media sites becomes everyday practice.

In doing the blog I am hoping to share the good work of my form group with a wider audience via the 100 word challenge website. I am looking to ultimately improve their literacy and creative writing, inform them about e-safety and how to act when online and also teach ICT skills along the way, directing them to useful websites via the blog.

I will get a better idea about how/whether to use the blog for posting my Mathematics classes' work later in the year after I have seen how my form group do/don't take to the idea. I can see a lot of positives coming from it and it will give some structure to our form times by having the weekly 100 word challenges, posting their pieces of work and then reading the comments that follow in subsequent tutor periods!

The blog I have set up is here http://mrcollinsclassblog.wordpress.com I have ensured that ALL posts/comments etc have to be moderated by myself before being published on the site to make sure that nothing inappropriate is put up.

If anyone has any comments on this, what has worked for you if you've done a class blog I'd love to hear of ways I could use it in the future, just leave a comment below!