Pi and Poetry: introducting students to pilish

March 14th is the annual celebration of everyone's favorite irrational number. While doing some research on pi, I learned about pilish, writing based on the pi's digits. I was immediately intrigued. The key to pilish is matching the words to specific digits. There are special rules for 0 and repeating digits. During a meeting with one of my fellow teachers from the ELA team, I mentioned pilish and offered my first attempt:

Now I fret
A dream abandoned me
Sacred sleep hex

Thankfully, my fellow teacher didn't judge my poetry, but did think it would be a great supplement to the poetry unit. While I reviewed circumference, radius, and diameter, she completed a lesson on pilish poetry. Students had to write a poem that was a minimum of 10 words long. The results: impressive. The kids found it challenging and many rose to meet it. They even added decorations beyond the original assignment.

 

In a follow up meeting regarding the lesson, we agreed that students wouldn't soon forget those pi digits.

Of course, I am by no means an expert on pilish, but it's something I want to use again next year (leading up to pi day this time). The Guardian has a very interesting article on pi haiku. This week's challenge: write some more pilish!