Oconee County holds an annual "reading incentive" program called the Battle of the Books. This program is based on the national program as a tournament of knowledge and experience with a set book list. The Oconee program uses ten of the South Carolina Children's Book Award Nominees for the year as a reading list for these teams. This year's list included a range of titles, of which I read The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.
The tournament in Oconee works that several teams are formed in September-ish by volunteers from fourth and fifth grades. Each team is made up of five students, chosen by the students themselves. Ravenel had about five teams by the time I began my internship, but some teams had already been eliminated through lack of participation and readership. Throughout the first semester, these students read the books listed, completed Accelerated Reader tests on the titles, and met on occasion for practice questions and discussion of the titles.
In January, the students competed at the school level to decide which team would be competing at the district level. This is a big readership and literacy night for the school, as the competition is very much a point-based "sport" that results in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams. Once all of the elementary schools in the district have competed within their schools to determine a winner, each schools' #1 team is sent to the district competition, held at one of the elementary schools. On the day of the competition, the student teams go for two rounds against a different randomly-drawn team each time. Once all the teams have competed two rounds, the total number of points earned determines the top three competitors for the final round. Out of ten schools, this three is rather elite! Finally, the three schools compete in the final round to determine the overall winner of Battle of the Books and to receive a trophy for the library and medals for each student.
This program is a huge community event for the librarians at each of the schools. The librarians and students have been prepping for months: first selecting the books and generating questions to the final moments of team practices and the school-level competition night. Yesterday after school, the librarians all met at the assigned elementary school (Blue Ridge Elementary) to set up rooms, chairs, paperwork, and other details to ensure the success of the event today. Once we all arrived this morning at 7:30, we finished set up of snacks for volunteers and technology for presentations and record-keeping.
The students were clearly excited to compete, arriving to their team t-shirt and waiting coaches/librarians. The rounds themselves were respectfully tense, in a good way, and very few teams were overly upset about the results. One reason for this is the hidden nature of the scores for each of the teams. You really only know how you and the team you are singly against are doing. Though Ravenel's team lost both of the individual rounds, we ended up placing fourth in the competition overall. I really like the ambiguity so no one gets so down feeling in last place or feeling so far behind. After these two rounds, all of the teams were given a participation medal before the emcee announced the final three teams competing. I was a little disappointed that so many of the "losing" schools left after the announcement of the final three, but I suppose busy lives with children can only allow for so much.
In the end, Orchard Park Elementary won the competition for the first time since the Battle of the Books Inception six years ago. I only saw one with tears and too many of the others were still excited for having read the books, competed, and won their own school's Battle. During the practices at Ravenel, you could clearly see the students discussing the books and the experiences they had reading each title. Overall, this seems like a giant win for promoting reading and literacy on a recreational, extracurricular level.
After the event, the librarians were discussing potential improvements for next year's program. I began taking notes on this document for the clearly exhausted librarians. They will be discussing this (and other topics) at their next district-level meeting within the month. One of the biggest areas for improvement I saw as an outsider is the limited use of the questions, reading, and effort put into each year's competition. For each year, the librarians have entirely changed the booklist based on the SCASL awards. At their meeting, I would like to suggest two from each of the previous years, cycling in two new titles each year. This way, the titles are still rotating, but good books and hard work are still used and reused for the program. Ultimately, the list could become strong with high-interest novels that would even further promote literacy and recreational reading.
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