Battle of the Books

Battle of the Books is finally over! Most people have never heard of Battle of the Books; I think it's mostly an Alaskan thing with a few other miscellaneous states and school districts thrown in to keep things interesting.

Here's the break-down. There are 7 grade groups (K, 1st, 2nd, 3/4, 5/6, JH, and HS) and each has its own set of 12-15 books. In 3rd-12th grades, students from a participating school form a team of 3 (per grade group), read the books, and then battle. In BSSD, that battle is in the form of a video-conference, because we're cool like that. Each school connects on their particular battle day and time. The district librarian asks really hard questions about nit-picking details in the books. The team decides which book they think it came from. 5 points for a correct title and an additional 3 points if they came up with the correct author. The team with the highest number of points wins the district battle and goes on to the state battle. K-2 is a little different. There is no state battle, so our teams can be as large as we want. It generally takes the shape of however many kids are in that particular grade. Kindergarten has 5 books, 1st grade has those 5, plus 5 more. 2nd grade has those 10, plus 5 more. Our battles are a little more relaxed; we're basically trying to hook them on Battle of the Books so they will want to participate when they get older.

As site coordinator for Elim, this year's battles started last spring. I ordered the books so that we would have them right away in the fall. They were waiting for me when I got here in August. I'm also the first-grade coach, so I know the k-1 books like the back of my hand. We didn't have a junior high or high school team this year, and our 3-6th graders didn't do too terribly well at the district battle during the last week of January. Our k-2nd graders, though, did awesome! Because our district is so large, we actually battle in shifts and then the schools with high enough scores go on to the "finals," - a final battle to determine the winner. My kids surprised me - I only had 3 of them there that day, but one of them knew the books backwards and front-wards. She was on fire! I didn't expect to make it to finals, but we did! We actually had the second highest score out of all the 1st grade teams! We ended up dead last after finals. That's right, last. That one little girl who knew all the answers? She was out sick that day. I had 3 kids again, but it was a different 3 and they didn't know anything about the books. Disappointing, but we had fun reading the books and exploring the pictures (that's where most of the questions come from - tiny details from the pictures), so it was all good. Kindergarten and 2nd grade made it to finals, as well. I don't know how the kindergarten did, but 2nd grade was in 3rd place! (One school cancelled due to weather and they're battling next week).

I'm glad the battles are finally over! I was getting a little sick of hearing "10 Minutes till Bedtime" (by Peggy Rathmann) 5 times a day. My kids are now hooked on Skippyjon Jones, though, so I have a feeling I will continue to hear that one. I'm donating all the books to our school library in the next week or so (after I finish reading the junior high and high school books!) and then I'll be done until April or May when it's time to order next year's books!