Picture Book World Cup

Last week, was our school's Book Week.  I had a number of things planned, I talked about them here.  The big event for the week was our Picture Book World Cup.  The idea of a Picture Book World Cup is that classes read two books and vote for one of them to advance to the next round.  Here are some of our Library Llamas Book Club describing how it works:

I picked up the idea from author Jonathan Emmett, and ran our tournament as suggested in his article.  The only difference was that we have a large school - 34 classes (including two satellite classes).  To make it manageable, I split the school into three different World Cups - one each for our Year 0-2 classes, our Year 3-4 classes and our Year 5-6 classes.  I had a number of new picture books (new to our library) and decided to use those so everyone, students and teachers, would discover some new books.  Here are the books I used:

If I had to choose again, I would try to include more books by New Zealand authors.  We have plenty in our library, we just didn't have many new ones I could use.

I didn't have themes like Jonathan Emmett did, I think using new books made that too hard.  Like Jonathan, I tried to include non-fiction picture books where I could (and the winner of the Year 5 & 6 Picture Book World Cup was a non-fiction book).

Here are the instructions I gave our teachers.  I had to remind teachers that I wanted the votes for each book, not just the overall winner, and there was a bit of confusion around them having to vote twice on the Tuesday.  I also had to be careful to track down relieving teachers and explain what they needed to do, and to intercept students who returned books to the library and not my office!  I was lucky that I had backing from senior management, with the understanding that participating in the Picture Book World Cup could be counted as part of the literacy programme for the week.  Overall, the week went really smoothly.  It was as successful as I'd hoped it would be, culminating in team assemblies which had kids cheering loudly as the two top books battled it out and the final winner was announced.

In order to make it as exciting as possible, I made up some slides and shared them with our team leaders so they could use them at their assemblies.  I also included some of the tweets from authors and illustrators I had received during the week:

Here are the overall winners:

Year 1 & 2

Year 3 & 4

Year 5 & 6

I have had great feedback from students, parents and teachers about how popular the Picture Book World Cup was.  It was a really fun event to run and I'd highly recommend it!

Update  Here is what one of the classes thought about the books in their Picture Book World Cup:

Four Things I'm Excited about in 2018: #4 Book Week

#1 Library Llamas
#2 Patron of Reading
#3 Reading Buddies
#4 Book Week

The fourth thing I'm excited about this year is our Book Week, which is in Week 3 next term.  I always enjoy a week of putting books and reading in the limelight, and I have lots of ideas to try.  Some of these are still evolving, but this is what I have so far:

Theme = Sharing Stories

When we held our Teachers' Reading Groups last year, I was disappointed by some of the results from surveys we did in the participants' classrooms, in particular the percentages of children who weren't being read to by their parents. I wanted a way to gently promote the importance of reading to our children, even when they are old enough to read to themselves.  So the theme for our Book Week this year is "Sharing Stories".

Picture Book World Cup

A while back I saw a post on Twitter about a Picture Book World Cup and I've been keen to try it ever since.  Author Jonathan Emmett describes it fully here, but basically it is a knockout competition where books are paired against each other and students vote on the ones they like the best.  Jonathan is a Patron of Reading and he ran a Picture Book World Cup at his patron school.  What got me hooked is his description of the special assembly to announce the winner - "Both books had enthusiastic supporters who broke out into excited cheering whenever their book pulled ahead".  Wouldn't that be fantastic?!  To have a school so excited about books they start cheering about them?

To make it manageable at our large school, we are going to run three Picture Book World Cups, one each for our Year 0-2, Year 3-4 and Year 5-6 classes.  This will also allow me to give the Year 5 & 6 students some sophisticated picture books. 

The Picture Book World Cup takes place over the course of a week, and will be one of the big events for our Book Week.

Readathon

Our PTA had tentatively proposed a Spellathon for next term, but happily they have agreed to change this to a Readathon.  I think this will fit nicely with our theme of Sharing Stories, as it will be a good way to encourage students and parents to read together at home.  I did a bit of research about how this works for the PTA, but it will be their job to run it.  The way that I liked best is to organise it by a minimum amount of reading per day.  After the student has met the minimum amount, any more reading that day does not count toward the sponsorship.  This encourages regular reading, not just one big session, and it also means that sponsors have an idea about what the maximum amount of their sponsorship will be.  

I have heard of students being sponsored by the amount of books they read, but I have concerns that doing it that way would incentivise reading smaller, easier books as fast as you can, rather than enjoying reading any story, however large or small, at whatever pace suits you.

Book Basketball Death Match

Earlier this month, I co-presented a workshop with the amazing teacher/librarian Steph Ellis.  She introduced me to the idea of Book Basketball Deathmatch.  Teams of five are given ten points each and in turns they have to answer book-related questions.  If they get the question right, one person from a team takes a shot at a basketball net.  If they sink the shot, they get to nominate a team to take points off.  Once a team has lost all of its points they are out of the game. 

Given our presentation was titled "Libraries Just Wanna Have Fun", we thought it would be a good excuse to test the game out on our unsuspecting audience.  It was a bit of a gamble with around 50 in our audience, but with a few adjustments (we overestimated our collective throwing abilities and need to bring our "net" in closer!), we could see that it was as much fun as we'd thought it might be.  We didn't finish a whole game, but there was still time for rivalries to form between Team 2 and Team 5!   All it took was one team choosing to deduct points from the other and the war was on!  It looked like having ten points each might make the game take quite a long time to play, I might try five points each for our school version.  We didn't have a basketball net, so our net was just an empty rubbish bin.

I'm wondering whether I should combine a staff version of Book Basketball Death Match with our next Teachers' Reading Group session.  It would be a lot of fun and they would get an idea of how to run it.  

I think we'll have to rename this for our younger audience, it will probably be Book Basketball Survivor. 

Author Visits

Dawn McMillan, our Patron of Reading, is coming on the Friday and will speak with our Year 3 & 4 students.  Illustrator Ross Kinnaird, who illustrates a lot of Dawn's books ,is also attending on the Friday and will be working with our Year 5 & 6 students.  Finally, we also have author Angie Belcher coming in earlier in the week to talk with our Year 1 & 2 students.  That might seem like a lot of authors/illustrators, but it is still 10-12 classes each for them.

Book Art

I'll be offering a couple of suggestions to the teachers for creating art for, or during, Book Week.  There is "door wars", where classes decorate their classroom doors using a book as inspiration.  Or students could draw their favourite book's cover and write a couple of sentences about why they like it.  Or instead of a couple of sentences they could give a three word review, (another idea that Steph Ellis talked about in our presentation).

Student Storytellers/Poets

When I was in London last year, I got to attend a workshop by author Atinuke (I love her Anna Hibiscus and No.1 Car Spotter books).  During the workshop, Atinuke told a traditional story.  There was no book, just her telling the story from memory.  I was completely enthralled and realised it had been a long, long time since I had heard a story in this way.  I was keen to have some of our older students tell stories to our younger students during Book Week.  Fortunately this ties in with our oral literacy curriculum, and one of our teachers is working on this with her students for me.

Then a couple of weeks ago I had a chance conversation with another teacher, who was telling me that her students were enjoying learning poetry and performing it.  Excellent, some more student entertainers for Book Week!  I love that this will be a different aspect of stories and poetry that we can share.

Mystery Readers

We've done Mystery Readers in the past and they were popular.  They suit the Sharing Stories theme perfectly so we'll be doing it again on the last two days of Book Week.  On the first day we'll have a staff swap (including senior management and support staff).  On the second day I hope that Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird will join in, as well as parents, who could share a favourite book from their childhood, and/or one from a different culture.

"The Big Read"

On our final day we will have "The Big Read".  I am hoping that we can encourage families to come in and celebrate reading with their children.  I am thinking that it would be nice if Dawn and Ross could take the opportunity to talk about encouraging reading for pleasure with parents in a special assembly.  I'll have to look into that.  We will have the announcements of the Picture Book World Cup winners, and student/parent sessions from Dawn and Ross.  Students will be able to come in their pyjamas, with their favourite soft toys.  I'll bring in lots of blankets and pillows and we can all lounge around in the library!  I'm not sure exactly how the morning will look for parents attending, I'm hoping to get some help with that from our teams.


I have been invited to attend a staff meeting in a couple of weeks to talk about Book Week and our plans for it.  The following day Dawn McMillan is coming for her first visit as Patron, and I'll go over our Book Week plans with her then.  The week after that I plan on attending a PTA meeting to help with the Readathon.  And then it's the holidays, and all of a sudden Term 2, Week 3 doesn't seem so far away!  Isn't that always the case?!

A Spy's Guide to Book Week

In earlier posts I have talked about how I got started with my "Spies and Detectives" theme for Book Week and some of the things I learned while filming videos for it.

Last week, our Book Week began. The week started with the video from author Peter Millett, which was shown prior to morning tea.  Pete obviously knows how to make videos look good and it was a great way to start things off:

Students were encouraged to come up with their own code names - I made a Random Code Name Generator for if they needed help with that.

Then at lunch, we showed our first "Spy School" video:

After that video, our Year 3-6 teachers hung up a poster about Morse code and another advertising our "Design a Gadget" competition (one of our teachers complained that students left her huge note after lunch, written entirely in Morse code!).

The next day, we showed our "Channel Z News" report:

To tie in with the report about a theft from the "elves that live in the forest", our artist, Jenna, added some extra pictures to our Reading Wonderland mural:

The News report showed a clue found at the scene of the crime, written in Morse code.  The pattern of getting a clue and then finding out how to answer it by watching one of the Spy School videos, continued until Thursday lunchtime, when the last clue was decoded and GPS coordinates to the location of the missing jewels could be "passed on to police" by the teachers.  I deliberately made the location of the jewels outside of Hamilton so no students could be tempted into going and having a look for the treasure themselves!

Friday's videos were another Channel Z News report, describing the apprehension of the thief, and a final video from Peter Millett congratulating the recruits for helping solve a crime and welcoming them as junior J.S.A. agents.

This week, after a viewing for all the spies and getting their permission to share it, the classes had a good laugh watching the Bloopers video:

Illustrator / Poet Visits

I told both our guests for Book Week about our theme and asked if they could incorporate something to do with spies or detectives.  Both of them were happy to do so.

Illustrator Daron Parton talked with our Year 3-6 classes.  He drew a cool spy wearing a hat.  Then he took suggestions from the students and drew different spy gadgets coming out of the top of the hat.

We also had Poet Judi Billcliff come and work with our Year 1-2 classes.  She created a new song to do with looking up, down and all around, based on the Hokey Tokey.  She also had the kids play the "Hot and cold" game to find a couple of simple clues to work out.

Guess the Book Title

Another activity we had was a competition to guess the book title.  Our younger students just shared with each other what the books were, while the older classes filled out entry forms.  I encouraged everyone to have a go and announced there would be random prizes for anyone who entered, as well as prizes to those who got the most right.

Junior School Book Week Activities

We issued "Where's Wally" and other puzzle books for our Year 1-2 classes and gave them some laminated Where's Wally characters to hide in their classrooms in different places every day.  The students loved this!

Many of the classes also watched the Spy School videos, but didn't watch the Channel Z News Reports or decipher any clues.

I had some lovely feedback from these teachers.  Their students were building spy gadgets out of Mobilo and spying on each other in the playground.  One group of Year 2 students had been pulled out of class to work with a visiting maths consultant.  Unfortunately, a parent wearing black shades walked by and the students cried out "It's a spy!".  When they got back to their class their teacher asked them how it went and their answer was "we saw a spy!".

One teacher got so involved she printed out her own spy ID badges for her class:

Resources

Here are all my resources if you would like to run your own Spies and Detectives Book Week:

• The plans I shared with our Year 1-2 teachers and our Year 3-6 teachers.
• The list of items I put into an envelope for our Year 3-6 teachers.  A number of them shared out the ID badges at the start of the week instead of the end.  If I did it again I would create a different badge for J.S.A. recruits to wear.
• The clues (you'll probably need to change the one that says "fridge" - that was a reference to our Book Fridge.  If you choose a location you have control over you can keep track of which classes have solved all the clues).
• The script for the Channel Z News episodes (if you want to do less filming you could just film these two short clips and change the place where the thief has taken something).
• The scripts for the Spy School episodes (I did cut some scenes out of these, and change words that students had trouble with).
• The script for an adult (I asked our Principal to do this so that I wasn't giving vital information about solving the clues to our student actors ahead of time)
• The Certificate of Appreciation was a Word doc and looked like this:

It came from the "New Zealand Crime Fighters Association" as I didn't know the legalities of saying it was from the police!

If you do have a go running your own Spies and Detectives Book Week I would love to hear how you get on.  And I'm happy to help if you have any questions.

Lessons Learned

I kept the videos unlisted and this turned out to be a good idea.  There were a few students who had a look on Youtube to see if they could see the videos ahead of time.  I did get caught out with students looking at the spy books we put on display.  It wasn't a good idea to put the ones dealing with codes in the display, there were some very keen students who used them to decode one of the first clues!  After that we took those books away.

The timing of the Book Week was really unfortunate.  There was a LOT on for the teachers in that particular week and I would definitely try to have it during a less busy time of the year so that the whole school could get completely involved in it.  

While some of the Year 3-6 teachers said my plan was easy to understand and follow, others were a bit confused.  It would have been better to attend team meetings and explain it verbally.

Final Reflection

The Book Week worked really well.  I loved having a theme - it generated ideas and tied everything in together.  I had students mention books that were talked about in the Spy School videos, and actively search for spy books - yay!  

Overall, everyone seemed to have a great time, and although it was very time-consuming it was a lot of fun for me to put together.

A Spy's Guide to Book Week - Filming

For our Book Week this year, I have filmed six spy training videos and two news reports!  You can find out more about how this came about here.

I have no training in making videos, although I did make a couple years ago.  The image quality is awful, best not to make it full screen.  Fortunately, I have upgraded our video camera since then.

I have learnt a few things from my filming this year, that may be of use if you're ever indulging your Steven Spielberg tendencies:

• Think about whether you want good actors or "friends of the library".  Every time I film I know the smart choice is to go for actors, but I end up picking "friends of the library".  If you are going to pick library people and not actors, then have personal knowledge of their capabilities, or hold auditions.  It is still really important that they be able to speak clearly and understandably.  

• Don't be afraid to ask people to be in your video.  I only had one student turn me down, and even the principal agreed to join in.  Author Peter Millet also agreed to film a couple of short videos for me.  Never underestimate the power of a fun project.

• Be mindful of the times that you are filming:  
• I chose the weekends to cut down on external noise, but one Sunday there was a netball tournament on and we had to avoid the times they made announcements on their loudspeaker (fortunately they weren't on it constantly).
• One of my filming sessions was in the late afternoon and during filming the sun moved and started streaming into our library from an angle which affected the quality of the film.

• If you go outside, take your keys with you!  On one freezing morning, I took the boys outside to film and then couldn't get back in.  Fortunately, the aforementioned netball tournament was running and I was able to go to the other end of the school, beg for a key, and get back inside.

• After you have hit the record button, use your fingers to count down from three before your actors start speaking, and give another count of three after they finish and before you push stop.  That will give you a bit of leeway if you want to use transitions between your scenes.

• If you have a student filming, make sure they don't bump the camera during recording and check EVERY TIME that they have actually pushed the record button!

• Make sure the students understand that they need to be familiar with their scripts!  I had a few tell me they hadn't read them....arrgghhh!  Also, reconfirm times with parents, I had a couple of students still at home when they were meant to be filming.

• Have fun!  And don't expect perfection.  Don't compare your amateur school video with a professional production.  Depending on the time you have, it may be unrealistic to expect your actors to have memorised every line.

• Be careful with the words you choose for the script, and don't be afraid to make changes.  One of our girls could not say the word "espionage" so I changed it to "spying".  After that, if I had harder words I spelled them phonetically in the script to make it easier for the students to learn.  I had the word "loitering" in one script and the students didn't know what it meant, which was a good indication it was not the right word to use.  I changed it to "lingering around".

• Allow plenty of time for everything.  Writing a script, filming it and then editing it will take a lot more time than you think.  My scripts were around about a page and a half long, my videos have come out at about 5-6 mins long and that took about an hour and a half to film.  Editing has taken about that much time again (I'm still learning though, it might be quicker for those who know what they're doing!).

• Let the students add their own ideas.  The kids were keen to add their own touches.  I was mindful of the content I needed to get across, but was happy to let the kids decide to spin their chairs around at the beginning, or add a sign-off, or create some extras for the bloopers video.

• Oh yes, have a bloopers video!

The students have been very keen and have been good at keeping their scripts 'Top Secret'.  Some of them don't know who else is participating, some don't even know there is an author and news items involved - it's good to give them surprises as well!

I'm learning as I go and it won't be polished but it is fun and the students will enjoy seeing people they know pretending to be undercover spies with exotic code names!

A Spy's Guide to Book Week - The Beginning

Last year, I attended a SLANZA conference workshop by Cathy Kennedy about how she approaches Book Week at her school.  I was inspired by a number of her ideas, in particular choosing a theme and keeping activities manageable for teachers, so you're not adding too much to their workload.

I decided our theme should be "Spies and Detectives", which would then allow me to promote mystery books.  I didn't want to encroach on too much teaching time, so I thought about using our 'eating for learning' time, the ten minutes that the students spend eating their morning tea and lunch.  Perhaps I could have a series of little activities for the teachers to do.

Then I delved into learning about spies.  They are so cool!  In particular, I liked learning about various ways of encoding secret messages.

When it came time to choose an author to visit during Book Week, my first choice was Peter Millett, author of the popular Johnny Danger books.  Unfortunately, he's in Auckland and we're in Hamilton and we couldn't make it work.  In a decision he might come to regret, Peter said he liked our theme and offered to Skype in or to record a video answering questions from students.

At the same time, I had decided that we could have a spy school and teach various spy skills as well as promoting our spy and mystery stories.  But it would be more fun if there was a practical application for them - how about some secret messages for students to decode?  Of course that led to an idea to have a news item about treasure that's been stolen from the elves who live in the Reading Wonderland.  Our lovely artist, Jenna, agreed to come in the weekend beforehand and add some little elves to our mural.

I decided the only clue located at the scene of the crime could have different coded messages on it.  Then we could have some students introduce some short videos about codes that I could find on YouTube and show a different clip at each eating for learning time.  Only there weren't any videos that were the right length and handled the way I wanted, and isn't it better to have one code lead to another clue in a treasure hunt kind of way?  And then, what about other spy skills, shouldn't we teach them?  Oh, and we can't have a student teach about the codes anyway because then they might be able to decode them ahead of time...  And that, dear friends, is how you go from a simple idea to scripting, filming and editing two news reports and six spy training videos, with additional footage about codes provided by your principal dressed as 007!  Not to mention having the temerity to ask an author if he wouldn't mind filming a couple of short videos pretending to be head of the J.S.A - the Junior Spy Agency.  Although if you've read the Johnny Danger books its pretty apparent Peter has a good sense of humour!

So, that's what has been keeping me busy lately.  I have filmed all my spy training videos and just need to avoid having the police called in after sunset as my son dresses as a robber and uses a torch while breaking into the Reading Wonderland and taking off with the elves' treasure.  I think it may be a good idea to let my principal know what's going on ahead of time!  I think my filming experiences could fill another post, so watch out for that soon.

Book Week starts on 15 August and before then I still need to do all my editing and work on some activities for our younger students.  Once I've recovered from the event I'll do another post, update you on how it went and link to all my resources in case you want to do something similar.  That's all for now, remember, this information is extremely TOP SECRET!