BOB - Battle of the Books

[chin]

BOB is a book reading competition for kids in primary and secondary schools.

In the 4 or 5 months leading up to the competition, the primary kids are required to read about 20 books while the secondary kids are to read almost 30.

Each school would then send two teams of 6 kids each to the competition. Each round two teams from different school would face each other, taking timed turns to ask questions about contents from the books. Each correct answer of book title gets 2 points, and one bonus point for getting the author's name right.

We think this is a very good competition, partly becasue the reading list always introduce good books that we never heard of. However it's not easy to keep the kids focused in reading all the books and remembering the content, author names, etc...

This year both of my kids are in the BOB. So in this thread I will post some pictures from past competition, and perhaps pictures of this years competition if I got the chance to attend. I will also post comment on some of the BOB books I read (well, not that I read many of them.)

[chin]

Primary School Battle of the Books (10-May-2006)

Book_Wyrm's first BOB while at Yew Chung. That year was Yew Chung's first ever BOB competition, and the librarian who organized the teams put in lots of efforts n preparing the kids. She would spend some time each week with each kid to check their progress, and discuss the books.

Perhaps partly due to the librarian's effort, the result was very good considered it was their first BOB. Unfortunately in the first round Yew Chung was up against ICS - the champion in the last few years, and lost by a very narrow margin - something like 84 vs 82 or about one question's worth of scores.

I was specially happy about the competition, not only the Yew Chung kids held up well against the previous champion, but also the fact that Book_Wyrm had challenged the answer to one question that resulted in that question being disqualified. During the whole competition, there were only two challenges - one raised by the teacher from the previous champion and one by Book_Wyrm.

In the 2nd picture below, you can see the books placed in front of the stage just in case there is a challenge and content check. The 3rd picture is the score for one round where Yew Chung was against Australian International School.

[chin]

Secondary School Battle of the Books (23-Apr-2008)

Unfortunately during the 06-07 school year the Yew Chung librarian quited, and left no one to organize the BOB team. After moving to RCHK, Book_Wyrm joined the school's BOB team.

The RCHK BOB effort were not as well organized as the Yew Chung one in 2006. The teams members and the librarians did not meet as much and some kids did not even close to finish reading all the required books. I also felt that Book_Wyrm was not as enthusiastic in preparing for the BOB.

The result was not good. RCHK scored way below the winning team in the first round of the competition. I hope they will do better this year.

[chin]

How to Be a Pirate
by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III
translated from the Old Norse by Cressida Cowell

This is a primary school BOB book, and the first ever BOB book that I read. And just happened that this is the second silliest of all the BOB books (according to my kids.)

It's a very simple story of little boys' fantasy & adventure, where the main character Hiccup had low self-esteem, was lacking self confidentce inside and physical abilities outside, etc... But at the end he somehow managed to achieve great thing by lots of good lucks, coincidence, and an eventual awakening of self worth and determination.

[chin]

6-May-2009

Finally, after months of preparation, the battles were joined today - primary BOB in the morning and secondary BOB in the afternoon. The winner of the preliminary rounds will go on to the final in about two weeks.

The photo for this year is not too good, mainly because of the sitting arrangement did not allow me to photo more faces. 

[chin]

6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools

4 schools competed in this particular prelinimary BOB - RCHK, Discovery College, Kowloon Junior & Christian Alliance. Each school will face another school for two rounds, for a total of 12 rounds of competition.

First set of photo is of the Discovery Collegs team. This was their first BOB participation. In fact DC is a very new school - they were co-located in RCHK until about 1 year ago.

[chin]

6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools

This is the CAIS team. Somehow they only have one team of 5 kids - one short of the 6 allowed. Did they had problem getting enough kids to read?

From my limited observation of past BOBs, CAIS usually is a strong team, and has won a few past championships.

[chin]

6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools

The RCHK team.

[chin]

6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools

And the winner was................
RCHK!
By a wide margin.

RCHK had about 110 points and 20+ ahead of the closest competitor. The first picture is a snapshot of some of the scores verse different competitors. The second is the victory photo.

[chin]

6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools

The first pic shows how small the venue was. And the DC team photo.