Starts at the end of November, finishes at Spring Break, almost the whole school participates in it and we can't wait till it starts again. What is it? Most of the kids in Revelstoke would immediately answer: "THE SKI SEASON!" but the students at Arrow Heights Elementary have an extra answer:
BATTLE OF THE BOOKS!!!
Here is BOB in a nutshell: there are three lists of ten books for three different age groups. Volunteer teachers write questions for each book, on different difficulty levels. Students read the books during the winter months and one spring day the schools compete against each other, by answering 20 questions that start with "In what book...?"
When I arrived at AHE six years ago the Battle was nothing else but an annual competition among the three elementary schools in town, where usually a small number of advanced readers competed against each other. Grade 3-7 students had to read a minimum number of books to be able to participate. Only the district winners received medals. Two-three classes from each school watched the competition, which - honestly - did not interest the students much, without knowing what the books were about...
I felt I could use the Battle to foster a strong reading culture, but I wanted to do it differently. My goals were:
- to read every single book every year, so I can promote them
- to reach and involve as many students as I can, even the weak readers
- to make the event fun for the non-readers
- to celebrate the books, not the winners
overall: to make Battle of the Books
And this is what I did in the last five years:
- read every single book and passionately, creatively and shamelessly promoted them night and day, to students, teachers, and parents,
- engaged the students in conversations about the books, no matter why they came into the library... and they usually left with Battle-books,
- ordered and offered the books to homeroom teachers for read-alouds, for lit-circles, and read them in reading remedial groups to weak readers,
- wrote 1000-1500 questions every year for practice,
- invited students at recess and lunchtime for practice and taught them how to do it independently, without an adult,
- encouraged the students to create their own questions and challenge each other,
- organized a school BOBFEST, an entertaining, crazy, interactive festival, where everyone can join a team, even if they only read one book...or in some cases, none,
- created activities for BOBFEST where it's not important if you read the book or not (after all, anyone can jump down from the top of the monkey bars and land on a gym mat while wearing a pair of silver underwear made by the team, yelling "OUTSTANDING!" like Hilo did...and it certainly piques the interest of the audience members enough that the next day we have a waitlist for Hilo),
- organized audience participation activities (one turned into a full-on riot)!
- dressed up my colleagues and brazenly forced them to perform a fashion show in book character costumes like a monster, Everest climber, a butler, a posh brat, Gangsta Granny and a troll.... including our principal,
- provided daily updates on Battle-news at morning announcements,
- gave a "real gold AHE bookmark/badge" to every participant (OK, not 100 % pure gold...)
- organized an ice-cream party for every participant,
- made the Announcement of the Teams an exciting day, with team-colours and names chosen.
And these are all happening BEFORE the District Battle, which used to be the only event by itself.
This year we had 54 students on teams (more than 25% of our school population), including 12 grade 2's.
We had students in tears fighting for books at the library, families changing holiday plans so their kids can be here for the Battle, and participants jumping up 9 points on PM Benchmarks in two months.
Unfortunately I have no pictures to show of BOBFEST, because when you are having too much fun (and a riot!) you kind of forget about the camera.
Now I just have to tell you who won the Battle.
Photo by G.D.
But does it matter?
This is a well-written and engaging post filled with many excellent ideas and takeaways. It is evident that you are fostering a reading culture and have a deep commitment to your students. For your next post, please include ideas from outside reading and research as well as a works cited.
ReplyDeleteThis is incredible! I love that you worked to move the focus away from the final contest and into building a whole community that feasts on reading. These kids are primed and ready to grow up and win all of the book related trivia nights at the bar.
ReplyDeleteThis is so amazing, I love it so much. It makes me want to become a librarian, or an English teacher (really anything other than French) so that I can implement this at my school. You often see incentive based reading programs, but they are always based on the quantity of books that you have read and not on retaining the information. It is too easy to forget to read and understand when there is no accountability for understanding or retaining what the students has read. I love this idea because it is fun, heathy competition and the goal is way more than just getting through the books. I think this is incredibly valuable for the student and would love to organize something like this.
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