When introducing the friendly competition , Battle of the Books, we held a zoom meeting between both classes. I introduced the competition and the classrooms to each other and we had a Q & A for the students to ask questions of each other and to communicate. Students loved the idea of getting to know another class and the questions tended to center around literacy and reading. Students asked such questions like, 'What books are you reading?', 'How many books has your classroom read?', and What are your favorite books to read?' This gave students the opportunity to get to know each other and to talk about what they were reading and engaging with. The conversation was student led, through the students question, and centered around literacy, which was perfectly on task to what I was trying to achieve.
Pen pal
To further encourage students in the literacy process students had writing extensions to encourage further literacy opportunities. They engaged with the writing process by writing letters to the class we were in competition with in the Battle of the Books competition. This allowed students to form friendships and to communicate in a traditional manner of writing a letter, sending a letter and receiving a letter. Students were very excited with this idea of communicating with others outside of the school and in the same age range. It also gave a face to the students we were in a friendly competition with. This created friendships beyond the classroom while expanding the literacy experience in a fun and engaging way. The goal was to engage students in as many literacy experiences as possible in fun creative ways, that were meaningful and interactive for the students.
Competition
The competition was developed and integrated into this project, not for extrinsic motivation, but to add a fun and engaging activity to build on various literacy experiences. They engaged in all six strands of Language arts through this process. They read books, with each other and on their own. They wrote letters, to the pen pals developed through this process. They listened to a read aloud done by Jenny Cofell on zoom. They engaged in speaking and communication by attending the zoom conferences with the other class and engaging in conversation. Finally, they had visual literacy through the interactions we had with the smart board. The literacy was constantly occurring throughout the day for students in the classroom.