Well, the votes are in, and we have a movie to show on the last day of middle school. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. We had a fairly large number of suggestions, so the first thing I did was throw out all of the movies that I didn’t want to see. Then I threw out all of the movies that were over 110 minutes long. Then I decided that, since I had already gone to all the trouble to figure out the run time for each movie, I should put up a web page so that other people didn’t have to do the same thing. It’s been up for a few days, and people are already visiting the 50 Best Movies for Middle School page. That actually took a few days, so, when I finally got back to the task at hand, I found I still had a couple of movies too many for the ballot that I wanted…
We did an Instant Runoff Election. As a former libertarian, I knew about alernative voting methods, but didn’t have any experience with them. This method is simple enough that we could do it manually during Codes & Ciphers club. The final outcome was decided by one vote, and we had to throw one ballot out (hanging chad) that would have resulted in a tie. The kids really liked that.
Here’s the final order:
9th place: High School Musical — Last choice for over half of the students
8th place: Labyrinth — No one had heard of it
7th place: Sky High
6th place: Clue
5th place: Enchanted
4th place: The Princess Bride — This movie really needs a different name
3rd place: Edward Scissorhands
2nd place: The Sandlot — Most 1st place votes
1st place: Secondhand Lions — Most 2nd & 3rd place votes
Hehe… Only you could make showing a movie to middle schoolers into hours and hours of work.
I like the page. Whoever stumbles upon it will definitely be glad for the help.
Agreed. You should see his chart for loading the dishwasher -- he throws out the dishes that are too large, the ones he doesn’t like, then he loads them according to how long it will take them to get clean.
It goes faster once you have the system down.
Now that you have the movie, it’s time to figure out the snacks & drinks for the movie. Please submit your list for voting as soon as possible.
Nooooooooooooo.
Corn on the cob…because they grow corn in the movie
Oooo, Ooooo, I know! Homemade ice-cream! We can make it in one of those ball freezers and kick it back and forth between the desks until it is done!
I say you should go with Mountain Dew and giant Pixie Stix.
Ha! A bunch of Cornholios.
Hi Curt!
I know who you are now!
We’re going roller skating in the afternoon. That should be fun.