Black History Month and Battle of the Books

Our Pre-K classes were learning about art and creativity this week, so I read Sydney’s Star by Peter Reynolds. Sydney loves to use the world around her to inspire all of her many creations.  Especially her remote controlled star.

February is Black History Month, so I pulled a bunch of biographies of famous African Americans.  I let the K – 3 classes choose what book they wanted me to read.  The majority of the classes wanted either LeBron James or Michael Jordan.

I did have a couple of classes that wanted to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marian Anderson.

This year is the first year that I’ve decided to do a Battle of the Books. I created a March Madness style bracket system of the top 16 popular fiction books that have been checked out this year.  Since this is the first year, I am only having 4^th and 5^th grade students participate. All completed brackets are due Monday, February 27^th.  We will complete the first round of voting on March 3^rd.  Our Spring Break will be the week of March 6^th, so we will resume our rounds of voting when we return.  We should have all voting completed by March 31^st and I will announce the winner on April 3^rd.  I’m excited to see what book will be the overall favorite and which student did the best job of predicting the winner.