New Thing: Battle of the Books

This year, we had a student transfer in midway through the year and ask if our school did Battle of the Books.

What's that, I asked?

Turns out, Battle of the Books is a trivia competition held in schools all over the nation. She had competed in prior years and was interested in doing it this year, if we offered it. After talking to my language arts teacher and visiting with my son's librarian who runs one at their school, we decided to try it out.

In January, I did a mock competition using popular YAL books, and then I explained the competition and invited students to participate. I ended up with four teams of 4-5 kids per team, plus a teacher team made up of colleagues and the school librarian. We used the William Allen White Award list, which I gave the kids, and they ran with it, dividing up books and getting started. Teams met every few weeks to report on progress, swap books, quiz each other, and encourage each other. On the last Monday of school, we dueled.

We held the contest on the last Monday of school during my class. Two teams were eliminated in Round 1, one in Round 2, and Round 3 was a face-off between the winning student team, and the teacher team you see above. We brought the whole team in for this (I gave my camera to a kid sitting on the first row…there are 100 kids behind her), and set up in the library during EO. Although I'm sorry to report that we lost, I am thrilled to report that the winning team was EVEN SHORT A PLAYER (she puked three times the night before) and they still beat us. It was a great game and a great experience! I plan to repeat it next year!