Battle of the Books: September

Battle of the books is a fun way to involve literacy in your classroom. Each month, you pick an author and books by that author. Make a bracket and have each book battle it out until you are down to the final book, which will be the winner! To make it more fun make a voting box to have your students vote for their favorite book! This is a really cool monthly activity because you can integrate it with Social Studies, science, math, and other ELA topics

September 1st, we started our first battle of the books. I chose to focus on Ame Dyckman for our first month. We read 8 of her books and figured out which book was the best written by her. My class had so much fun completing this for the whole month of September.

All you need to is a place to put a bracket up and you are good to go! I have a lot of bulletin boards in my classroom, so I decided to use one of them for Battle of the Books. I used black electrical tape to create the bracket lines. I printed out and laminated the pictures of the book covers we chose as a visual for students. If you choose 8 books you are able to do three full rounds.

Round 1

For the first round, I read two books every other day. I would read the books that were battling off with each other. As a class we would discuss each book in detail and talk about our favorite part and least favorite part. We did this during our morning meeting time. At the end of the day we would vote on which book we liked the most.

I created a voting box last school year during my student teaching that we use for battle of the books (and other voting matters). Click here for a detailed description about how to make your own voting box for battle of the books!

Students' vote on index cards what book they liked the most and place it inside the voting box

I count the votes up and we then proceed to do a drum roll. The winner is announced and that book then, moves onto Round 2!

Round 2

For Round 2 I do things a little differently. I did this round during writing, and we integrated reading and writing. Since we already read all the books, for this round a did a brief recap of the books in the Final 4. I went through each page and gave a brief summary of what happened. Students then wrote and drew what book they wanted to see in the finale. 

I counted up the votes and the books that students' wrote the most about, moved onto the final round!

Round 3

For this round, I allowed students to pick what book they liked the best. The students who liked Misunderstood Shark stood one side. And the students who liked You Don't Want a Unicorn stood on the other side. Both groups then had 10 minutes to come together and reenact the book. They then presented the reenactment to the class.

You could also have students use a website called flipgram, where students can record their own videos. As a teacher you can set up topics, and students login and click the topic and record their video underneath that topic. You could have students record their reenactment through this website. You can then pull up their videos and present it to the class. 

You can also have a live debate and have each side voice their own opinions on why one book is better than the other.

After, you allow students to vote again using the voting box. 

We had a drum roll and the best book by Ame Dyckman was announced!

You Don't Want a Unicorn was a big hit from round 1 and came out on top in the end! 

In Conclusions

This is a great way to incorporate Author's Study in your classroom. It also allows for multiple opportunities to for interactive read-aloud in the classroom. For the next month, we have decided to focus on the author Mo Willems.