Battle of the Books!

Every year, one of the biggest highlights of our library program is our Battle of the Books tournaments!  We just completed our SIXTH year and our program has grown so much since when we first started.  We began with just two grade levels, 3rd and 4th, and one tournament.  This year, we had a third grade tournament, a 4/5th grade tournament, and a 6-8th grade tournament.  We also had two staff teams and the winner of those two teams battled the winner of the 6-8th grade tournament.  A total of 60 students, 10 staff team members, and 11 staff coaches participated this year!

How does it work?  Students form teams of 4-6 members.  There are 10 book titles for each level of battle.  The students work together to try to get each of the books read by at least two team members.  The teams also each have one coach to help keep them on track.  This year, our teams were formed, and the students began reading the books in December.  

During the battles, the teams take turns answering questions about the books.  The questions are always in the form of "In which book..." and the answer is always the title and author of one of the books.  It sounds easy, but it's not!!  Many of the questions focus on small details in each of the books.

Here were some of the highlights from this year's battles:

This was the first year we separated 3rd grade and had them do their own battle and it worked out beautifully!  The students were able to read books that were a little more manageable and ease into the experience.  We had four teams.  The two winners from Monday's preliminary rounds were Team Girl Power and Fiction Addiction.  Team Girl Power won the final, but not by very much!

At the 4/5th grade level, we had three 4th grade teams and two fifth grade teams.  The Rocking Bookworms 4th grade team beat the Flying Battle Books by just two points to make it into the final round!  The 5th grade team CBLC Bridge to BOB beat the Japanese Dwarfs to advance to the finals.  In the final round, it was tied for a while but The Rocking Bookworms pulled ahead for the victory!

We had three teams in the 6-8th grade battle.  During the preliminary rounds, the 6th grade team, Fantastic Five, beat both the 7th grade team (Jose Upton Liked Unicorns Too Much) and the 8th grade team (Word Nerds).  The final battle ended up being between the Fantastic Five and the Word Nerds with the Word Nerds pulling out a victory!

It was fun to watch our two staff teams compete against each other!  I'm sure it's not easy to compete against your peers with other peers watching (Hmm, must be what it feels like among our student teams!!).  Team "No Comparison to This Staff of Harrison" fought hard, but our junior high staff team won for the second year in a row!  They then went on to beat the 8th grade winning team.  Congratulations to ALL who participated in any way!  

A HUGE thank you to all of the staff members who helped helped out as coaches!  We couldn't do this without them!  Also, thank you to my co-director Mrs. Lachel and our principal, Mrs. Huff for all of their help!  Thanks to Caitlin Bergan from the McHenry Public Library for help with writing questions and during some of the preliminary rounds! Thanks to Dale for help setting up and cleaning up!  Finally, thanks to ALL of the Harrison staff for being flexible during these last few days!  You are all AWESOME!