Discover movies worth showing in your classroom, with practical insights on the themes, learning opportunities, and educational value of each one.
Wonder follows Auggie Pullman, a boy with a facial difference who enters a mainstream school for the first time in fifth grade. It is a story told from multiple perspectives, which means students do not just follow Auggie through the year but also see how the people around him experience it. Few movies ask students to step into someone else's shoes quite as deliberately as this one.
A Beautiful Mind follows John Nash, a mathematical genius whose groundbreaking work on game theory brought him to the edge of international acclaim before schizophrenia began to unravel everything he had built. It is a story about brilliance, crisis, and the people who refuse to give up on someone even when that person has lost the ability to distinguish what is real. For older students, it is the kind of movie that stays with them.
Ratatouille follows Remy, a rat with an extraordinary sense of taste and smell, as he pursues his dream of becoming a chef in one of Paris's most celebrated restaurants. It is a movie about ambition, identity, and what happens when someone refuses to accept the limits others place on them. Students who think they have nothing to say about food, creativity, or following a dream tend to find out otherwise.
Lord of the Flies (1990) drops a group of boys onto a deserted island and strips away every rule they have ever lived by. What happens next is the kind of story that stays with students long after the lesson ends. This free guide gives teachers a structured way to use the movie in the classroom, whether as a standalone text or alongside William Golding's novel.
Hidden Figures tells the true story of three African American women whose mathematical brilliance helped NASA win the Space Race, all while navigating the segregation and discrimination of 1960s Virginia. Students who think history class means memorising dates will find themselves gripped by a story where the stakes are as high as orbit. It is the kind of movie that sparks genuine conversation long after the credits roll.
A quietly devastating drama that tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a German officer's young son who befriends a Jewish boy on the other side of a concentration camp fence. Sensitively made and deeply affecting, it is serious classroom material for older students.
