Northlake Elementary’s Book Battle
Students at Northlake Elementary enjoy reading so much, they cast more than 700 votes during the first round of their Library Book Battle. In a page right out of college basketball’s March Madness playbook, library and technology educator Kimo Aleman has created head-to-head brackets and invited students to vote for their favorites each day. Will the final winner be Where the Wild Things Are or The Color Collector? Carnivores or Dragons Love Tacos?
The suspense is building all over campus.
“One of my biggest goals is to foster a culture of reading on our campus,” said Aleman. “I want to get kids reading and talking about reading. I want to get our staff excited about talking about books.”
To vote for their favorites, students were required to read the selections. The children were game.
“I was putting up winners for the first round, and students got super fired up and excited because the book they voted for advanced,” Aleman told me.
The initial 16 selections were chosen by teachers, who volunteered to record themselves reading their favorites. Children may access the videos on YouTube, and every student from K – 6 is eligible to vote.
“The students learn how every vote matters. It’s a social studies lesson about making sure your vote is heard.”
Pie charts report the results, and top vote-getters will advance each week until a champion book is crowned. The winners, of course, are the students themselves.
“We’re just getting them excited about reading and introducing them to classic books and stories they’ve never read before,” Aleman said. “It’s easy nowadays to read for intention and purpose, but sometimes we just need to read for fun.”
