Battle of the Books: November

To increase the love of literacy, I have decided to implement something new that we are going to do every month in our classroom. It is called Battle of the Books. I got this idea from a Facebook group I am in. Every month you pick a children's author and you read their books to figure out which book is the best. Each week you vote on books (bracket style) until you are down to the final one that will be the winner. For the month of November we are focusing on James Deans' Pete the Cat books.

With elections tomorrow, I decided to integrate Social Studies into this lesson and tie in a unit about the importance of voting! I was so excited to teach my students this unit and they had a lot of fun with it too.

The Social Studies standard I chose to focus on was: Government 1.9 (Collaboration requires group members to respect the rights and opinions of others.)

The ELA standard we focused on was: W.1.1 (Write opinion pieces that introduce the topic or name the book being written about, express an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.)

I started off with a PowerPoint I made about voting. Click here to view the PowerPoint I made for my class. The first two slides listed the standards stated above and broke them down into simpler terms for my students. The third slide talks about why voting is important. I told them what voting means, why we need to vote and who is allowed to vote. I explained to them that even though they can't vote in the elections tomorrow, they can still go with their parents to vote. I also informed them that there were other ways we can vote, like in our classroom.

I then introduced Battle of the Books, and informed them how we will be voting on books in our classroom every month to find out which book is the best.

The first two Pete the Cat books we read were Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons and Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes. Before we read,  I had 5 students stand up to give them a better visual of why it's important to vote. Three students on one side (group B) and two on the other (Group A). I gave each group a book. I told the class that the two students in group A voted for their favorite book while only one of the three students in group B voted for their favorite book. Even though more people liked the group B book, only one vote counted and group A won. If all three people in group B voted, their book would have won. I explained to them how that is the reason why it is so important to vote, so everyone's voice can be heard and why every vote counts.

Then we read both books. The reason why I love Pete the Cat is because of the music. My kids loved the book and enjoyed dancing along to the music. In between each story, I asked my students what are some things they liked about each book. This was to get them thinking and start formulating their own opinions on what book was better.

Afterwards, the students all went back to their seats and I explained the writing portion of the lesson. Each student got a piece of writing paper and I explained to them how everyone was going to write down what their favorite book was and give an example why.

My students still can't write yet so I gave them two sentences already written out and they had to fill in the blanks.

The first sentence, students had to fill in what book was their favorite. The second sentence they had to fill in their reasoning on why that book was their favorite. I also had pictures of the book on the board and at each students table, to help them with spelling.

While they were writing, I set up a voting booth and had the students come over one by one and vote for their favorite book.

Click here to see how I made this!

I explained to my students how when you vote, it is in secrecy. I called each student up one by one for them to choose which book they liked. I also had a copy of the book covers to help remind them. If the liked. They chose which book they liked and turned in their ballot.

My parents voted early and they got voting stickers for me. So when each student was done, I gave them an "I voted" sticker.

I tallied up the votes and at the end of the day I announced the winner. I taught them how to do a drum roll, and the winner was.......

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons!!

Next week we will read two more Pete the Cat books and the winner of that will move onto the next round. We will keep going until we are down to one book!

I am really happy with how this lesson turned out and that I got to teach my students about voting.