Monday, June 4, 2012

Math Movies

My contest is still on. Practically no one has entered. Your chances are pretty good. Contest closes on Wednesday...

Thursday and Friday I was called to cover a math class. The teacher left them videos. (Don't judge her too harshly. I've subbed for her several times, and this is the first time that she didn't leave them lots of work to do.) In the lesson plan she stated that we could watch a movie they brought, so long as it wasn't rated R.

The videos she left were educational, but not math related. I doubt they would have wanted to watch something math related anyway. So, when 2nd period saw what their choices were, a couple students asked if they could go to other teachers to borrow something that they would like more.

Once we had a couple appropriate choices, I took a vote. On Friday it was 6 to 4 with more than 10 abstaining. I put in the borrowed A Walk to Remember.

More than half the class ignored the movie. And if it had been something class related, I would have gotten on their case. As it was, I harped on them to keep the noise down. Some of them wanted to watch the movie.

One by one, a few students moved to seats at the front of the classroom. One pushed her desk so that it was next to the speaker. The girls were all riveted. Not that every girl in the class was in the front group, but the front group was all girls.

Then two boys joined the group at the front.

That's what I get for stereotyping.

I'm glad that a few of them enjoyed the movie. Most hadn't seen it before.

But this got me to thinking. There aren't any math movies out there. There's Stand and Deliver, of course, but it seems like every math teacher shows that at least once a year. What other movies are there that feature math in some way? Help me out here. Can you think of any?

2 comments:

  1. Stand and Deliver was the first movie I thought of. Then I thought about Good Will Hunting but I'm pretty sure that's rated R though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rain Main sort of. Good Will Hunting was going to be my next one.

    Last year, one math teacher I worked with always showed episodes of Numb3rs.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.