http://www.mrmayo.org Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:29:13 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week, our school community came out to watch two and a half hours of films created by my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We packed the theatre with close to 400 people for our 2nd annual film festival. I love teaching this film literacy class because we get ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=293 Can middle school students create interesting, engaging, well-made short films? Can they have their very own film festival at an actual movie theatre and invite 300 plus people from the community to attend? Is this possible? Of course it is!  We are just about done putting our film festival together. We remixed ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=290 Longfellow Ten veteran, VHD, recently completed this cell phone PSA for our upcoming film festival. I wasn't sure he could actually top last year's cell phone PSA, but he managed to do so. This is just one of many short pieces we are putting together for our film festival. We have a TON of work ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=289 For the last two years, my students and I have published a digital literary magazine called Space. Students from across the country, and even other countries, have submitted all sorts of original digital work to the magazine. This year, we are too busy preparing for our upcoming film festival to put ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=288  We're in the middle of our big film project right now in my film literacy classes. Students have spent a good amount of time in pre-production brainstorming story and character ideas, writing scripts and creating storyboards for all their scenes. It appears all their hard work is paying off. They ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=287 Hard to believe I've been back at work for almost two full weeks. My nine week paternity leave flew by. I'm posting this picture of my daughter for those students who have been asking to see her. She is about five and a half months old in this picture. It ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=286 Our official LF10 club t-shirts have finally arrived direct from Squidfire. I'm out of the building for the next two months on paternity leave so please see Mr. Stelzner to purchase your shirt. The shirts come in three colors, a variety of sizes, and cost $10. Get yours now, while supplies last! The guys at Squidfire were kind ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=285 The Longfellow Ten is kicking off a stop-motion figurative language challenge. The idea is simple: Create a short, clear, creative stop-motion video depicting an example of a type of figurative language. For more details about this challenge READ THIS. It's rumored the Midwest Collective of the LF10 is wrapping up production on a number of new ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=284 An extremely rare collection of silent films was recently discovered in the vaults of the United Artists Archives in Hollywood, California. What makes these silent films unusual is that they appear to be produced, directed, and edited by middle school students.  The film shown above, The Fight for Love, is one ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=283 "If you are not interested in your story, I guarantee you no one else will be." The quote above is from Marilyn Horowitz, NYU film professor, writing coach, and author of the book we use in my middle school film class, How to Write a Screenplay in Ten Weeks (The Middle School Edition). Ms. ... http://www.mrmayo.org/?p=281