Battle of the Books wins students’ attention, minds

At Santa Lucia Middle School, this year’s Teacher of the Year, Colleen Poynter, and Librarian Suzanne Kennedy have turned reading into a full-on team sport through Battle of the Books.

The teams have prepared for the big game. The fans are in the stands cheering on their favorite team. The excitement builds with each play. When the winning score is made, there is no containing the standing ovation.

Who would ever think we were talking about reading?

This reading incentive program takes all of the excitement students receive from athletic sports and applies it to the benefits of reading.

Reading increases vocabulary, improves writing skills, increases comprehension and opens up higher level thinking for students. The best part of the contest is that it is fun! Nothing can beat F-U-N in student engagement in learning, but that is really hard to do without creative, dedicated educators. Luckily, Colleen and Suzanne came up with this exciting team sport, and teachers have rallied around it.

“Battle of the Books” is funded by the Cambria Education Foundation. The nonprofit organization funds “out-of-the-box” teaching strategies such as this project throughout Coast Unified School District. This project begins with a list of books that students must read from to earn a spot on a team. Mrs. Kennedy’s website (http://slmslibrary.blogspot.com) has a list of the books the students have been reading this year to prepare for the big event.

Each team represents a color, adopts a mascot and plans its strategy for the game. The “battle” will take place April 13 in the gym. The stands will be full of supporters and the players/readers will have to remember facts from 12 books they have read throughout the school year.

It looks a little like musical chairs, with teams huddled in a circle, ready for the question about a book or author. Team members confer with one another, and the team leader pops up to give the team answer. If they get it wrong, the other team has a chance to steal the point.

The final “battle” will take place April 15, when the two teams with the most points advance and compete for the coveted title before the entire school. It gets really exciting during the “lightning rounds,” which are all about quick answers. The crowd goes wild with excitement cheering on the teams. The students in the stands are all decked out in their team colors, making the crowds look like a giant rainbow.

When a question is asked, you can hear low whispers in the audience, proof that many spectators are also well qualified to compete. You can hear a pin drop as everyone waits for the answer.

Mira Panchal, an eighth-grade seasoned, battler shared, “This is my third year in the Battle of the Books. I love strategizing with my team, and my favorite part of the day is the lighting round because everything goes so fast and it is a thrill!”

The winning team takes its point accumulation to the final competition of the school year, Field Day, in May. In addition to that, the winners will have well-deserved bragging rights and an awesome memory from middle school.

Santa Lucia Middle School has been doing the Battle of the Books for five years, and it has been so successful that the idea for having the whole school read a book together came up last year.

As a school, we read “Long Walk to Water” by Linda Sue Park. That reading culminated in a competition in which students carried water over an obstacle course and competed to make the longest string of paper beads, raising money for clean water in Ethiopia.

This year students at both the middle school and high school read “Pay it Forward” by Cambria author Catherine Ryan Hyde. She spoke to the students as a group after they had all read the book. They were able to ask her questions about what she thought of the story and why she ended the story the way she did. Meeting the author gave students a whole new dimension to reading a book — a much bigger impact than just a book report. Inspired by her idea, the students have been eagerly raising money to help students less fortunate than themselves through the Free the Children Development Project.

At every school there are the athletic students. There are also students who are good in academics, students who excel in the arts, and students that are whizzes with technology. The challenge is finding ways to encourage all of them to use school to pursue their interests. Research shows that students that like going to school have higher academic achievement and fewer disciplinary problems.

So the question is, how do we motivate students to want to attend school? One of the ways to do that is by encouraging the things we know they like. The Battle of the Books has successfully mixed the qualities of team sports with academic achievement in a way that promotes student participation with peers.

Kennedy stated, “Students love the camaraderie this event generates as they come together, compete alongside other students and feel the excitement and joy that teamwork ignites — and they not only love the event, they learn to love reading.”

You are welcome to come and see the competitive reading event and cheer on your favorite team color. It is something to see!

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 10:29 AM with the headline "Battle of the Books wins students’ attention, minds."