This year's Battle of the Books is in full swing! Once again I'm doing brackets on the bulletin board.
5th grade
4th grade
The first round is to make a digital poster for your book. Students used the website PosterMyWall.com to create posters that represented their books in tone and style. This week the students will vote on their favorites from each bracket set and we'll see who moves on to round two - book trailers!
Fourth and fifth graders voted last week and The Land of Forgotten Girls, by Erin Entrada Kelly, was the winner at DBS! There were 21 kids who read at least five of the nominated books and got to vote. One motivated kiddo read all 29 books from the list! The Land of Forgotten Girls won by a small margin. It seems there wasn't a landslide winner like there was last year. It was also our Battle of the Books winner in 4th grade this year.
The Vermont Department of Libraries tallied the votes from all of the voters throughout the state and the official winner is Projekt 1065, by Alan Gratz! I loved this book! It was so exciting! It was also a semi-finalist in our Battle of the Books in 5th grade this year.
Alan Gratz has two books on next year's Dorothy Canfield Fisher book award list: Ban This Book, and Refugee. Check out the whole list and get a jump start on your reading!
The Battle of the Books took a little longer than expect, but we made it to the end and celebrated!
The fourth grader winner were able to defend their book, The Land of Forgotten Girls, by Erin Entrada Kelly to the end, convincing their peers that their book is best.
4th grade winning book
Fifth was a cliff-hanger for a few extra weeks, but the winners put together a cute (spoiler alert worthy) news report to help their book win the battle. Congrats to When Friendship Followed Me Home, by Paul Griffin.
5th grade winning book
Each team got to invite friends and we all celebrated with a pizza and brownie lunch. Crazy kids! :)
4th and 5th grade Battle of the Books winners, plus their invited guests.
Next week all the 4th and 5th grades will be taking a Battle of the Books survey. I can't wait to see what they have to say.
We will also be voting for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher book awards next week. All of the books in the Battle of the Books this year are on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher book award list.
It's a whole new year and I clearly have not done well with maintaining
this blog! I love blogging, but boy, time is always of the essence. For more up-to-the-minute info about what's going on in the library, follow me on Instagram at @dbslibrary.
The start of the year has brought with it new books, new students, new robots, a few snow days, and a huge Scholastic Bookfair order! This month the students will be learning programing with Lego WeDos and Wonder Workshop's Dash and Dot. Other students will be learning about how to create movies using the green screen we have. Our Battle of the Books continues, with five teams competing in Round 3 at the end of this month. There will be lots of stories, stuffed animals to cuddle, and fun things to learn.
I'll try to update here a little more often because I do love to read blogs and hope others still do to, but I know Instagram and Facebook provide more timely access to information. Stick around for some library fun!
I am very excited to start a Battle of the Books program at Dothan Brook School. I have seen a lot of ideas kicking around on the Internet and it took me a year to wrap my brain around it, but now I've got it and the kids are getting excited!
We are going to do four rounds, elimination style. Fourth and fifth graders will be working in pairs to convince the rest of their class that the book they chose is the best! They are trying to convince the rest of the kids to read their chosen book.
Round one, with everyone participating, will be to create a poster in art class that represents their book. Posters will be displayed in pairs in the library and their classmates will vote on which ones make them want to read the book the most. Winners will move on to round two.
Round two is to do a dramatic reading in front of their class, round three is to act out a scene from the book, and round four is to create a technology project.
I have mentioned to the project to the kids a few times in the past few weeks, but gotten lukewarm response. This week the kids are picking their books and the excitement is definitely building! Fifth graders have picked their books and fourth will be picking later this week.
Check out this silly intro I created using PowToons. I've been showing each class at library time.
This is a learning experience for all of us, but I hope everyone has fun!
