Many educators think of February as Love of Reading Month, so it is especially fitting that Battle of the Books takes place during that month. Sixty-five KPBSD teams participated in this year’s district competition. All did an awesome job. Most of the battles took place using audio conference technology with the final round teams competing using video conference. All agreed it was an added bonus to “see” the other teams.

Congratulations to the following teams that made it to the final round of competition!

• Grades 3 & 4 – Cooper Landing School-1st Place; Homer Connections Homeschool -2nd Place; Sterling Elementary-3rd Place; and West Homer-4th Place
• Grades 5 & 6 – K-Beach Elementary-1st Place; Soldotna Connections homeschool - 2nd Place; Homer Connections Homeschool -3rd Place; and West Homer Elementary -4th Place
• Middle School – Nikiski Middle-High School-1st Place; Kenai Middle School -2nd Place; Susan B. English School -3rd Place; and River City Academy -4th Place
• High School – Soldotna High School–1st Place; Susan B. English School -2nd Place; Kenai Central High School and Nikiski Middle-High School- Tie for 3rd Place; and Homer High School-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.

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.

 

• High School – Soldotna High School tied for 5th place (24 teams)
• Middle School – Nikiski Middle-High School, 7th place (29 teams)
• Grades 5/6 – K-Beach Elementary, 11th place (35 teams)
• Grades 3/4 – Cooper Landing School, 3rd place (34 teams)

Book lists for next year’s battles were chosen by members of the Alaska Association of School Librarians at their state conference on March 12, 2016.  The list is posted at the State Battle of the Book's website.

Story contributed by Karla Barkman, District Battle of the Books Coordinator