Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi is written by Cindy Neuschwander and illustrated by Wayne Geehan. The tale will take you on a 'Math Adventure'.
One day Sir Cumference has a stomach ache after eating lunch. His son, Radius, goes to the doctor to fetch a cure. Unfortunately for the father, Radius grabs the wrong thing and turns his father into a fire breathing dragon. Radius must find a cure to return his father to normal before the dragon is hunted down by the castle guards.
Back at the doctor's office, the boy finds a curious cure called 'The Circle's Measure' that will turn his father back into the king. But Radius must figure out the circle's riddle to find the correct dosage or his father will remain a dragon forever!
Radius measures pies, a wheel, and even his father's dragon tail looking for the correct measurement. He finally figures out the magical potions portions with pi! (3.14) His father is changed back into a human and all is well!
To celebrate Radius' accomplishment, the King declares that from that day forth any pie with an 'e' will be for eating and pi without an 'e' will be the number for all things round.
An eighth grade class used the story for Reader's Theater. Here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU_O8PdDJpI
The book can be used with standards:
MCC7.G.4: Know the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle and use them to solve problems; give an informal derivation of the relationship between the circumference and area of a circle.
MCC2.G.1: Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.
The story can be used to show that the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle is always pi (3.14). There are tons of activities that a teacher can do with this book. All you need are circle shaped items of various sizes for the children to measure. Students can prove, just like Radius did in the story, that when measuring the middle of a circle and then using that distance around a circle it always goes around 3 and 1/7 times. Many schools celebrate pi day on March 14 and have the students bring an actual dessert pie from home so they can measure all the different desserts and all get the same results.
This story would be a great way to teach your seventh grade students where pi comes from when learning their equations, and also can be shown to younger students to promote interest in shapes. I'm glad we were able to blog about this book at this time because this is the absolute perfect story for pi day.
My math teacher use to read these books to us before a math lesson. I did not understand why she read them, but I figured out the book actually explained what we were going to be doing that day in math and it helped us understand the concept a little bit more. I like that y'all explained the book in quite a bit of details so we could understand what was going in if we had never read them before. These books are actually really good. I like that you listed more than one CCGPS on yours and you all explained it, and didnt just write the name down.
ReplyDelete-rachel