The troops, formerly scattered about the room, were summoned together for a final confrontation during the last week of school. I can only hope that no only certain students were caught in the crossfire.
middle school
End of Days
Friday was the last day of middle school. Here’s the schedule:
08:00 take attendance
08:05 awards ceremony
09:05 Secondhand Lions
11:00 lunch/access
12:00 closing devotions
12:30 skatezone
In practice, it was a little different. We had about twice as many parents as usual for the awards. I think it’s because we have never had them at the start of the day before, so that was a good idea. We had the parents sit above the students on the bleachers for better heckling. Our teachers didn’t have their act together, so we didn’t get started until 8:15. Oh well.
For the movie I put the two 12 foot screens together. I’ve tried that in the past, but finally got it down for this one. It’s a lot bigger than it looks in the picture. They seemed to like the movie, but it took a while for them to get into it. They were cheering and clapping at the end.
Our choir director helpfully took down all of the AV stuff, so I had to race to get everything put back together for the closing devotions. And there was a big transportation snafu, but we all made it, and I had “music videos” of the 7th and 8th graders to show while they waited for the bus.
We managed to skate without incident this year (last year: concussion, broken arm, dislocated knee), and the owner of the skating rink said that we had the best group of kids that he’d ever had at the rink. He said that right before I skated off to “pre-break-up” a fight.
The Votes Are In.
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
50 Best Movies for Middle School
We recently decided to show a movie to our 6th, 7th and 8th grade students on the last day of school. But when we started brainstorming ideas we had some difficulty coming up with movie titles that (a) the students would like and (b) we thought would be worth showing.
Listed below are the movies we came up with after consulting a variety of experts including: current middle school students, former middle school students, middle school teachers from across the country, lots of family movie websites, and random people on twitter and facebook.
Do Your Homework
Don’t Take My Word For It. Always preview any movie before you show it. Just because a movie appears on this (or any other) list doesn’t mean that it works in your situation. For instance, I included Stand by Me in this list and it is rated R. If I were actually going to show it, I would look for an edited for television version. If a movie is rated PG or PG-13, offer some guidance to the students before you watch it. Explain to them what good things they can take away from the movie even though there might be some language that isn’t appropriate at school.
Incorporate it into the curriculum. We’ve shown The Karate Kid when we’re talking about bullying as a school. One teacher shows Newsies in social studies classes when she’s talking about immigration and industrialization. I’ve shown Searching for Bobby Fischer before I teach students how to play chess.
Stay Legal
You may be required to obtain a Public Performance License to show your movie. Movie License USA offers these guidelines for schools to use when determining if they need to purchase a license. Generally, you do not need a license if:
- A teacher or instructor is present
- The showing takes place in a classroom setting with only the enrolled students attending
- The movie is used as an essential part of the core, current curriculum being taught. (The instructor should be able to show how the use of the motion picture contributes to the overall required course study and syllabus.)
- The movie being used is a legitimate copy, not taped from a legitimate copy or taped from TV
Movie License USA also serves a clearing house for many movie studios, so it is a good spot to look to obtain a license if you need one. They offer single license for $75.00 which is good for one showing of a single movie on a specific date.They also offer site licenses that are good for all of the studios that they represent for one year (as many showings as you’d like). Site license prices are based on the number of students in your school.
About the List
The list is sortable. Click on the heading to sort it by run time, rating and so forth. The title link goes to the Internet Movie Database listing for the movie and the rating link goes to the IMDb Parents Guide for the movie. Additions to the list are welcome. There aren’t actually 50 movies listed yet, so feel free to suggest some in the comments below. If you think a movie on the list is especially good or bad choice to show at school, lets hear that as well.
The List
What do you think?
- Suggest another movie? (what did we miss)
- Any poor choices on the list? (you can’t show that in school)
- What are your top 3? (two thumbs up)
Checkmate this out
Every year I teach our 7th graders how to play chess, then around Christmas I send home an order form so that they can buy some nice chess stuff (by that I mean so that they can convince their parents to buy them some for Christmas (by that I mean that maybe their parents will throw some money my way to buy some chess stuff for school)).
We order from www.wholesalechess.com, and this year our order was over $500.00. They have great prices. This stuff would have cost well over $1000.00 anywhere else that I’ve found. At the bottom of the order form is a blurb asking them to consider giving a little bit to help buy some chess equipment for the school, and every year our parents are more generous than I expect. Last year, in addition to listing the price of a set ($6.90), I also said that chess clocks cost about $20.00 each. A parent sent in enough to buy three. This year I mentioned that a giant chess set costs $110.00 and a parent sent in $110.00.
It takes up both of my tables, but they were mostly used for playing smaller games of chess anyway. Interestingly enough, about the same number of people participate. Instead of having 8 people playing 4 games of chess, there are 2 people and a host of spectators. I’m training up a bunch of geeks.
The king is a little over a foot tall. So, my question for you is: Where am I going to store these?