Battle of the Books

We tried to get a bona fide Battle of the Books team going at the kids' school this year but after I did the research and recruited the teacher to head it up, the process of getting it set up with the organization took so long that we'd missed the chance to compete in a tournament with other schools. Mr. C had already assembled a group of interested 5th and 6th graders when he found out we wouldn't be going to a tournament and he wanted them to have a BOTB-ish experience, so he put his own competion together, pitting the 5th graders against the 6th graders.

Each team divided up a list of about 20 books and came together in Mr. C's classroom after school one day last week for the big contest. (One of the kids on Cat's team bailed at the last minute so they quickly read the backs of the books that boy had been assigned.)  Answering questions on Kahoot! (such a cool program), the teams raced to answer 80 questions correctly and quickly. The 5th graders led for a while but ultimately Cat and her teammates came out victorious. Mr. C had cute little trophies for the winning team and let all the participants choose any book from his classroom library (as he won't be teaching next year).

Cat had a lot of fun with it and I was glad to be able to watch the whole thing. It was cool to see Jack get excited too, whenever there was a question about a book he was familiar with.