Students Participate in Battle of the Books at Washougal Elementary Schools

The stage is set for the Battle of the Books at Washougal Elementary schools.

“The idea for the battle started at a Professional Learning Community (PLC) meeting of elementary library assistants last year,” said Kathy Stanton, Hathaway Elementary Librarian.  “We decided then to have a competition between our schools in April of this year.”  Library staff at Gause, Cape Horn-Skye and Hathaway Elementary schools chose twenty books for the battle and in September began encouraging students to read those titles. 

“A student must read eight books to qualify to compete on a battle team,” Stanton explained.  “There are four or five 4th and 5th graders per team. Teams are asked questions from any of the 20 books. Each question begins: "From what book....?", and each team answers with the title and author of the book they think the question is from.”

Points earned with correct answers decide the winners.

This spring, each elementary school will have an in-house battle to choose their top two teams. Then, on April 14, the winning teams will meet at Washougal High School to battle for the top honor.

Hathaway Elementary fifth grader, Brienna Elliott, from Erin Hayes’ class, was recently recognized for having already read 14 out of the 20 battle books.  Her prize?  She was given a special parley with the “Pirate King,” aka David Tudor, Washougal School District Curriculum Director.  The two sat down in the library over lunch last week and discussed her accomplishment and chatted about the books she had read.  Tudor also visited classrooms to help spur on excitement in the contest.