Hey Elementary School students:

How would you like to get paid to go to the movies every day? The St. Petersburg Times’ Film Critic Steve Persall watches and writes opinions (called reviews) about most all movies that come to Tampa Bay theaters so our readers will know whether or not to spend their money on a Friday night trip to the theater. Most of the movie reviews come out in Thursday’s Times Weekend section of the paper. Persall has a special section in each Thursday’s Weekend publication called the Family movie guide. This is where he gives a short review of all the G, PG and PG-13 films playing that week. If you don’t have a copy of Thursday’s Times handy, use the e-Edition or the Times’ archive to find last Thursday’s family movie guide. Read each short review carefully and grade the movies you have seen with a school type grade (A+ to F-) just like Steve Persall does. If you disagree with Persall’s judgment on a movie, write a response to him in this blog by clicking the comment bar below. Explain what your favorite character or part of the movie was and feel free to ask him questions about his opinions as well. Be sure to check back later as Mr. Persall has agreed to answer any questions you might have right here on the NIE blog.

The student who does the best job describing a movie in this blog will win a “Morty the Blogging Bee” stuffed toy, donated by the local non-profit organization, Charity Works. The “Mortys” will be awarded at the end of each month through May 2009.

At the end of your blog response, make sure you write your first name and last name initial, grade, teacher’s name (from the class where you did the blogging) school and city. It should look like this:

Tammy J., 5th grade
Ms. Fraser’s English class
Williams Elementary School
Tampa

Good luck and keep blogging!