Re: [LM_NET] Battle of the books

[Shonda Brisco <sbrisco@GMAIL.COM>]

I've looked at this project (Battle of the Books) for both elementary
and high school students and wondered about that question myself.
Although our questions also involve recall of specific information
through the questions beginning with..."In what book...." I have
decided that creating a program (with a competition involved---which
is what we do with the BOB program) that involved higher level
thinking would basically be what is done in the classroom when a novel
is being discussed---but can this be extended to a competition level?
With higher level thinking, students are involved in creating new
information or utilizing their personal experiences and combining them
with the context of the literature to create new thoughts,
assumptions, or presentations. I believe that teachers have a great
opportunity to engage in the project with their students and allow
them to create new ideas, new projects, new writings, etc., through
the use of these specific books which might be an extension of the BOB
program.

Teams (or groups of students) participating in the BOB program could
create new ideas / projects utilizing the themes of the novel,
addressing a problem within the novel, or presenting a historical /
futuristic representation of the novel through writing, drama, art,
technology, music, etc. Students could be evaluated on their
presentation of a specific novel (or novels).   I think adding these
elements to the project might allow for those higher level thinking
skills that you're talking about and engage some students who are also
visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or tactile learners; however, it will
also take much more time from the teachers who will create the
criteria for creative thinking.

Perhaps you and your teachers can look at the novels being used and
create some basic guidelines that might be used for all of the books.
Then present these options to the teams of students to allow them to
not only work together to create a new project (thoughts, ideas,
presentations of the novel) but to also learn how to critically
evaluate the literature using research techniques and library
resources that would definitely be involved in the creation of these
new ideas.  It would also be a great way for you to integrate some
elements of information literacy into the program (and possibly even
involve some instruction of technology standards into a research
project that extends the novels).

Just a thought...

~Shonda

-- 
Shonda Brisco, MLIS
District Librarian
Peaster ISD
Weatherford, TX 76086

Currently reading:  "Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the
Grade" by Linda Perlstein

Digital Bookends wiki / blog:
http://digitalbookends.pbwiki.com
http://shonda.edublogs.org/
sbrisco@gmail.com

Resources for Texas School Librarians:
http://txschoollibrarians.ning.com/
http://txschoollibrarians.wikispaces.com/

"Digital Resources" columnist
School Library Journal

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