Team Leaders

Team Leader Responsibilities

The mission of a Battle of the Books Team Leader is to support students in their love and discovery for reading by introducing them to quality literature and to develop friendships between students. Please contact battleofthebooks@aldenpta.org if you have any questions throughout the program.

Attend the Kickoff on Wednesday, October 20, 2021
The kickoff is a pizza party held in the Alden School cafeteria. After the coordinator reviews the Battle of the Books program, the teams break out into small groups to meet:
Introduce yourself to your team and have team members introduce themselves.

• Pick a team name based on your assigned team color.

• Review the Summaries (3rd grade, 4th grade or 5th grade) and ask for a show of hands which students would like to read each book.

• Make notes about which books your students have already read OR want to read to use when creating a team book schedule (see Meetings page for more information).

Assign books and schedule your team's meetings
Each team leader decides their strategy for reading the twelve books. Books can be divided up and assigned to individual team members as the book's "experts" and/or teams can read all twelve books. It helps to identify the books that will be discussed at each meeting so team members can be prepared to discuss the books at each meeting. Please see the Meetings page for important information about planning your meetings.

Discuss the books
You do not need to read every book! Check the resource page for each book for practice questions and other resource materials to use to review the books. Also, asking the kids to tell you about the book is a great way to learn about the book!

Prepare for the Final Battle
Periodically practicing sample questions with your team is a great way to get ready for the Final Battle. Discussion questions can be found under the web page for your grade. Each team comes up with a theme for the Final Battle based on their team color and team name. Matching t-shirts are not necessary but a creative theme with your team's name and color makes it fun. Team Leaders sit in the audience at the Final Battle to cheer on the teams. Have fun!

When the final battle is approaching, spend part of a meeting answering questions as they would at the final battle:

• Divide the students into teams.

• Ask sample questions and have them hold up a paper with the title or author to answer the questions (at the final battle they are given an iPad to hold up with their answer).

• Flipcharts with titles and authors for each grade can be found in the Team Leader Resources section to be printed (PDF) or load onto a iPad (key).

Tips from Previous Leaders
We asked a few seasoned Team Leaders to share their ideas and tips for leading team meetings. Here are the responses:

• Keep it fun. When we tried to just sit and discuss the books, I spent the whole time trying to get them to pay attention. So we borrowed a Jeopardy game and the kids LOVED it. Wanted to do it every week!! Keep it fun and they will engage!!

• We assigned each kid 2 books to be experts on early on. Then I assigned 2 books to try to read per meeting. I did questions only on those 2 books per meeting. If kids were not able to read the books they were covering at a meeting, I asked them to read the summary. We did one final "review" of all books at the end.

• I had my team read one book in preparation for each meeting. Each kid was asked to write 5 questions. We threw all the questions in a hat and they pulled and answered questions for 45 minutes. Kids love it when they hear their questions being read! The kids’ parents can help them write their questions (or at least make sure they get written). And, throw in a few of your own if you are short. Toss candy to the kids when they answer! And to the kid who wrote the question.

• Set up meetings on half days of school. Play for a little while outside so they get a break, then meet .” *NOTE: Duxbury Public Library does not open until 2:00 on Mondays.

• Don’t stress out if you can’t find a day that everyone can meet. You’ll be waiting ‘till eternity. Do your best to schedule a meeting day that works for the majority, but be sure to choose a different day the next time, so that the others can make it. And be sure to have hand- outs for those who may have missed the meeting.

• My team did not like to meet in the cafeteria. There’s something with that huge space that makes the kids a little out of control. Plus it gets noisy if there’s another group. The multi-purpose room at Alden (room 102) is a good place to meet, or a Duxbury Public Library conference room. The kids enjoy it when you mix it up a bit.

• The kids are often hungry after school. So a snack is usually appreciated (make sure to ask about allergies).

• The kids love to compete. Find another team leader and plan a mock-battle at a combined team meeting. You can really only do this after they’ve read a few books.

• In the past, I’ve scheduled the meetings for an hour. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve found that I always have extra time at the end with not much to do. So just plan for that extra time or make the meeting 45 minutes.

• There are free sites that allow you to create your own word search or crossword puzzles which is a fun way to use words from the books.

• Every one of our kids learns in a different way. As such, I think the goal should be to empower our children to have a great experience. This means that some of them may want to read every book, others may want to focus on one or two books. There is no wrong or right way to go about doing this, what matters is that our kids are involved, have fun, and experience working as a team.

• Everyone reads several chapters in a book then when we meet we play charades and try to figure out what part of the book someone is acting out.

• Since I love to cook I can cook some different foods that are mentioned in the books and the kids can have a contest on who best describes the part of the book that the food came from.

• We played BINGO (check online for a free Bingo game board maker). Put the book titles in the squares and ask questions from the question bank online.