Math + Poetry = Fib

It’s that time of year again! Dr. Anthony Ungaro, math teacher, presented at a morning meeting about NA’s Annual Fibonacci Contest.  
 This longtime tradition at NA continues to engage students in a fun exercise of merging math and poetry. “The contest is so purely NA,” says Dr. Elizabeth LaPadula, English teacher, who works with Dr. Ungaro on the contest. “It's about intellect and having fun, and using the beauty of the spoken word with math.”
 
The Fib, a poetry form bearing similarities to the haiku, is based on the Fibonacci sequence, which is a series of numbers in which each number (Fibonacci number) is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The simplest is the series 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8.
 
Middle School and Upper School Students are encouraged to create their own Fibs, which must be a six-line, 20-syllable poem with a line-by-line syllable count of 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8. The only restriction on a Fib is that the syllable count follows the Fibonacci sequence. 

Students can submit their Fib-tastic poems to Mrs. Pursell at cpursell@newarka.edu or drop them off in the math office by Fib-ruary 1.
 
Gregory Pincus first came up with Fibs while pondering a haiku writing exercise. Here are two Fib examples by Gregory K. Pincus:
 
One                
Small,
Precise,           
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fob.
 
Slam!
Dunk!
Soaring…
I’m scoring.
Crowd keeps on roaring.
In my dreams I’m unstoppable.
 
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An independent school for students in grades 6-12