What's Happening at SAS Pudong?
Teams have met in the library every 2-3 weeks to run a Kahoot Quiz, 1 quiz per book, and have been quizzed on 5 of the books, including Uprooted. We will have one more Kahoot Quiz before our Winter Break.
We have 11 teams participating in these quizzes. We will have an Elimination Round in February to narrow down to our 6 teams for the Battle.
Where are you at?
In the spirit of "we're all in this together" here are some suggestions on what you may want to focus on at this time.
*Students should have formed teams, and those teams should have team names. Hopefully you have lists of all those team names and their homeroom teachers with a way to keep in touch with students as needed.
*Within those teams, students should be working their way through all 7 books. Some of my students have finished reading each book, and some are on their 2nd or 3rd title. Try and encourage ALL students to read ALL of the books; this should be a full team event and the best way for everyone to be involved is for everyone to have the same knowledge.
*Moving forward you'll need a way to communicate with parents. Once we have our final 6 teams sorted out, I'll be asking a room parent in 5th grade to generate a QR code for parents to join a we chat group if their child is in the battle. That will be our main means of communication for the 6 weeks leading up to the event. Have a think about how you will share information in your community.
*Each student will be required to pay a fee to participate in the Battle of the Books (exact amount yet tbd) so make sure students are aware of this. How will you collect the money? Remember, no fapiaos will be issued. I will be using the we chat group to collect the money, with a parent volunteer coordinating the collection.
About the Poster
For our "Alternative Book Cover Poster" section of Battle of the Books note that each team; not just each school, submits one poster. So, my school SAS PD campus has 6 teams, I’ll submit 6 posters on behalf of my school. I invite any students on each team to participate and then the team votes on which one they want to submit. This can of course be tricky if you have more than half of the team wanting to submit, and/or popular students on teams whose art might be chosen based on friendship rather than skill. You can decide how you want to handle the participation, perhaps you or an art teacher choose the poster if there is a conflict; it's up to you. If I receive one poster per team by Friday March 6th, I will be happy.
This year we are not accepting any AI or digitally made “alternative book cover” posters. I made this decision based on the quality of submissions we received in the past two years. Our communities are full of students who can do a much better job themselves. This is a chance for the artists on each team to shine. Students can use any other medium they like including pencils, markers, watercolors, pastels, crayons, black and white or color.
All posters are to be e mailed to Leslie.Henry@saschina.org as PDFs with the file name of the school, the team, and the book on the document such as:
Shanghai American School Pudong – Labubooks -- Unplugged
We will print posters A3 size and there will be an opportunity for students to see their own, and each other's posters, during the event.