Today our school held its first two interest meetings for our Elementary Battle of the Books. I was completely unsure what to expect but so far everything seems to be going extremely positively.
Our wonderful PTA has backed us from a financial standpoint and purchased extra copies of the books for our library. I am grateful for their support. I'm not really sure how I would get enough copies of the books otherwise. Soon we will have three physical copies of each book and a few in e-book format.
As for the kids their interest has been phenomenal. I briefly book talked all 18 of the titles with each of the 4th and 5th grade students which for us is about 250 kids. The copies that we already had are now all checked out with waiting lists. Even some of the kids who haven't officially expressed an interest in Battle of the Books were asking for the titles. This is not something I would consider normal behavior unless we are talking about Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Minecraft.
I've recruited 4 other teachers who are willing to help coach our kids and be "experts" on some of the books which is good because I'm not sure how I'd get all 18 of the titles read on my own. I've got two read but need to write questions for them.
After our two interest meetings we have 15 kids who have expressed interest along with their parents so hopefully we can field a full 12 person team. I'm holding out hope that some other kids who did not come to the meetings will still want to participate. I'm going to remind the students in class as I see them the next time.
In general this to me is an outstanding success that I am excited about. As long as the kids have fun this year, and share the titles with their classmates then I think we've done something pretty important in regards to sharing a love of books.
