Why do they love BOB?

This is our fifth year offering Battle of the Books (BOB) at our school. It continues to be a very popular event for upper primary classes. We deliberately choose titles the students may not choose to read. We always have a ‘classic’ a book that has stood the test of time, “Mrs Frisby and the rats of NIMH” or “The phantom tollbooth”. We include a nonfiction title – last year it was “The boy who harnessed the wind” the year before it was “Trapped” the true story of the rescue of the miners in Chile. This year we have introduced a new category – the graphic novel to complement our existing category of the sophisticated picture book.

What is the appeal of BOB?

I think it is fun of reading books outside your normal interest areas and ranges. Many of our students read at least one of the books and a few read all seven. The way we run the quiz is that teams of up to four students enter the quiz together and they should ensure that all of the books have been covered by the team. So some students might read three others four or five but as a team they have the seven books covered.

A lovely additional part of BOB is that over the years we have created a few collections of multiple copies of titles and so our students create their own book clubs and use the BOB books from previous years to discuss.

Students create practice questions and each question gets one point to take into the competition. Each team can take a maximum of three points into the competition so past winners have often scored 22/20 points for this reason.

There is no compulsion to be part of BOB but when we run the quiz there are kahoot quizzes for the audience and they can join in with the main quiz as well. One of my colleagues thinks the appeal of BOB is the competition element. We do have trophies for the winning team.

I get my inspiration for possible book titles from the Battle of the Book organisation. We make up the question which all begin with the phrase “In which book…”. There are 20 questions total we run the first ten then rest and have a Kahoot quiz then the results go up and then we run the final ten questions. I always have three tie-breaker questions as well.

BOB is fun and an annual event in our school for grades 3 and 4 and also grades 5 and 6.

Our wonderful designer Begum and me showing off our latest BOB poster

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