Flipped Update…

The Christmas break is over and a new year begins. Well…should begin as soon as I get that first call for 2011.

One of the last classes I covered before the Christmas break was a 5th grade class. Of course the lesson planned, end of day video listed wasn’t anywhere to be found.

Fortunately, I had in my bag a DVD video of the new movie Flipped that the publicist for the production company sent me as a freebie for mentioning the movie in a previous blog post. Since I hadn’t viewed the movie beforehand, I consulted with another grade level teacher to see if it would be ok to use as a substitute. She really liked the idea as they had just finished reading the book as a class a couple weeks earlier.

Just before lunch, I told the class that I had a movie that they hadn’t seen before (it was released a few weeks before) and when I told them the title, they were excited…well most of them anyway. One girl told me that she had already seen it on Netflix, PPV or some such like video service. Fortunately, she was the only one to have seen it as the rest were really interested to see the movie adaptation of a book they knew so well.

Normally, classroom movies are hit and miss attention wise. I don’t require students to actually watch the movies as long as they aren’t disruptive for those who do. This was the first movie I’ve shown in class where almost everyone was engrossed in the story line. Unfortunately, the movie had about 15 minutes left when the end of school bell rang. But that didn’t result in the expected mass exodus of kids storming the exit before the movie ended. Most of them lingered as long as possible until about a third of the class who didn’t have a bus to catch or parents waiting, stayed to see the end.

From the first and single viewing with the class, I guess I’d have to call the movie a “hit”!