Battle of the Books

Sixty-four KPBSD teams answered “In which book…?” during the annual KPBSD Battle of the Books Competition. All did a spectacular job. Cheers to the following teams who reached the final rounds:

  • Grades 3 & 4 – Redoub-1st Place, West Homer-2nd Place, Port Graham-3rd Place, and K-Beach-4th Place
  • Grades 5 & 6 – Port Graham-1st Place, Nikiski Middle 2nd Place, Kenai Middle-3rd Place, and Redoubt-4th Place
  • Middle School – Homer Connections-1st Place, Skyview Middle-2nd Place, Kenai Middle-3rd Place, and Chapman-4th Place
  • High School – Soldotna High School–1st Place, Homer High -2nd Place, Kenai Central-3rd Place, Nikiski High-4th Place, and River City Academy-5th Place

Battle of the Books is a statewide reading and comprehension program sponsored by the Alaska Association of School Librarians. The goals of the program are to encourage and recognize students who enjoy reading, broaden reading interests, increase reading comprehension, and promote academic excellence. All this is accomplished through a game-show style competition known simply as “BOB”.

Lists of books are chosen and questions are written for all the grade levels. Students read the books (fifteen titles for Grades 3-6 and twelve titles for Grades 7-12), quiz each other, learn title and author information, and compete in teams of no more than three students attempting to score as many points as possible answering questions related to the books. Battle questions all begin with the words, “In which book”. Students are allowed thirty seconds to confer with team members and come up with an answer which is always the title and author of a book on the list.

KPBSD teams battle using audio conference technology early in February each year. All teams participate in three morning battles. Scores from these battles are totaled with the top four scoring teams moving on to final afternoon rounds.  At the end of each day a KPBSD winner is declared in each of the four competitive age groups.

Our district-winning teams moved on to the Alaska state competitions held the end of February. Our teams represented our district well placing as follows.

  • Redoubt - Grades 3 & 4 / Placed 7th out of 37 teams
  • Port Graham - Grades 5 & 6 / Placed 5th out of 36 teams
  • Homer Connections - Middle School / Placed 16th out of 26 teams
  • SoHi - High School / Placed 4th out of 24 teams

Book lists for next year’s battles will be chosen by members of the Alaska Association of School Librarians at their state conference on March 1, 2015.  The lists will be posted at the State Battle of the Books website soon thereafter.
Karla Barkman, District Librarian and Technology Integration Coach






















 
 
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