My students loved the movie! Most of them already knew how to calculate π, but there were a few that never knew where exactly π came from. After the movie, I quickly reviewed the concept.
To keep he momentum going, we did π day singing. I found some great songs, using holiday songs, all with words about π at http://www.teachpi.org/downloads/PiDayCarols.pdf. The students love that we were singing in math class!
Next on the agenda was to find the digits of their birthday in π. I used the website: http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery. Almost all the students could find all eight digits of their birthday somewhere in the first 200 million digits of pi. I did have a few students who were not able to find their digits. (π actually goes out to about 5 trillion digits.) If we had a website with more of the digits, my guess is that all of the students would have been able to find their birthday digits.
Finally, I read the students a book called, Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.
Although it is a bit babyish for teenagers, they were so engaged! Many of them had heard the story in an earlier grade. While I read the story, my students colored in π pictures. Here are some of them:
The students had a great time, and I did too!