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Public Zone 公開區 => Bookwyrm 書蟲天地 => Topic started by: chin on 30 March 2009, 03:05:16
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :(
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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.
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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.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools
The RCHK team.
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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.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Primary Schools
The first pic shows how small the venue was. And the DC team photo.
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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.
:o
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:o
Not too surprise. Last year was RCHK's first BOB, and the primary section did not organize too well. This year the organization, preparation & participation are much better. It reflects in the number of kids in the team.
RCHK's secondary did not do so well today, also reflected in the preparation. More details after I prepare the photos.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
This round of preliminary competition was held in the Kellet School. Perhaps it's a smaller school, their team only have 6 kids. Their black, conservative looking uniform looks cool.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
The RCHK team. They seem to adopted the strategy of keeping a few core member in the team and rotate the other members so more kids got to participate.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
The CAIS team, and the eventual winner the Macau International School.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
A better view of the competition venue. The setup made it very hard to take good pictures, because I did not get to see many faces. Only the backs.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
The RCHK team was in a pretty good second position after the first 6 rounds. But the last round against Kellet was particularly humiliating – RCHK did not score any point until the last question. At the end, Macau International was the clear winner by a 20-point margin, while the other 3 schools are only a few points apart. The judges admitted that their individually kept scores did not match each others.
Last year RCHK was dead last, and this year it has improved quite a bit. But the preparation can and should improve. From what I heard, the general attendance rate for the preparation meetings was poor. There was at least one incident where only 5 people showed up.
In this year and the last, the BOB team was organized as one of the many available extra-curriculum activities, instead of as a team representing the school to compete with other schools. Thus the mind set was much more relax and not very spirited. While the ultimate purpose of BOB is to get kids to enjoy reading, having a competitive spirit could add quite a bit motivation to finish reading all the books.
Another common complaint on the preparation is the lack of access to books on the BOB list. My kid missed at least two books simply because the books could not be located. With more and more schools joining the BOB, the books could only get harder to borrow.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
My last gripe concerns the poor moderation by this mister, perhaps the librarian from CAIS.
He repeatedly lost track of which team was answering and which team was picking up. He repeatedly called the wrong school or child names. He repeatedly disrupted the kids (like repositioning their name tags) while they should be focusing on discussing answers within the time limit. He gave the wrong answers and caused the retraction of at least two questions. He gave the answer at the same time of asking the question, thus caused more retraction of question.
Although none of these problems benefited any team, it disrupted the rhythm of the competition. I would hold him responsible for the confusions that caused the judges not able to came up with the exact final scores.
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6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
My last gripe concerns the poor moderation by this mister, perhaps the librarian from CAIS.
When the judges can't agree on the final scores it is quite ridiculous. It was fortunate that the
winning team was so far ahead. And what's with the adjusting the name tags... odd. :-\
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When the judges can't agree on the final scores it is quite ridiculous. It was fortunate that the
winning team was so far ahead. And what's with the adjusting the name tags... odd. :-\
Sometimes the kids' name tag wasn't placed in a place that was easy for him to see, so he would take out the stickers and re-attach to a better place. The problem was he did that a few times when the kids were discussing the answer within the 20 or 10 seconds allowed time limited.
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Sometimes the kids' name tag wasn't placed in a place that was easy for him to see, so he would take out the stickers and re-attach to a better place. The problem was he did that a few times when the kids were discussing the answer within the 20 or 10 seconds allowed time limited.
There were a few incidents where he made some of us lose our train of thought. I went something like "Wait, it was that book by Rosemary.... What are you doing?? DING"
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
The 4 finalist schools were Beacon Hill in blue uniform, Chinese International in white, Kellett School in red checkers, & RCHK.
The venue was Chinese International School. The hall was very dark, and the moderator specifically asked the audience not to use flash during the competition. So it was very difficult to take any good pic.
First is the trophies - one for the primary competition in the morning, and one for the secondary competition in the afternoon.
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
This was a perfect round 18:18, where each team was able to answer each question. :)
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
The winning team was the Kellett School, by a wide margin of 20 points or so.
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
After the competition.
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20-May-2009
Battle of the Books Final for Primary Schools
There were quite a few year 5 kids here, so next year the team should be stronger with experienced members.