Rooster Games 2020

On Friday our fourth graders participated in the first-ever Ashaway School VIRTUAL Rooster Games!  It took a lot of coordination and a great deal of help, but we managed to keep the tradition alive despite the challenges of distant learning! 

Team Yellow, captained by Miss Bloom!

Team Red, captained by Mrs. Young!

As always, all of the students who read at least five of the books on the list of nominees for the Rhode Island Children's Book Award were invited to participate in the games.  The six teams (each a mix of boys and girls from both fourth grade classrooms) competed in a variety of games that were based on books from the list.

Team Green, captained by Miss Calnan!

Team Blue, captained by Mrs. Pelligrino!

Each team of students had a Team Captain (an adult who managed the schedule and facilitated the games).  All of the adults and students started off in an "auditorium meet" and then each team entered their own, private meeting space to collaborate on each game.  I was able to pop in and out of the private meeting rooms to observe and help out as needed.  It was so much fun!!  

Team Orange, captained by Mrs. Carrier!

Most of the rounds consisted of a Google Slide deck or Google Jamboard which allowed the team members to work together.  These games included an Illustration Round (match illustrations to the books they came from), Object Round (identify which book a set of objects represent), Question Round, Character Quotes Round, and a First or Last Lines Round.  All of the team captains reported that the students worked really well together as they collaborated on the games via Google Classroom and Google Meet! 

Team Purple, captained by Mrs. Ornburn, works together on the Object Round.  Look at those faces!  I love how focused the students are in this picture!!

This year we didn't have to worry about teams overhearing answers being shouted out during the Charades Round because they were all working within their own Google Meet!  In this game the students take turns acting out words for their teammates to guess.  Doing so earns the team a point, and then they can earn a bonus point by identifying which book the word represents.  This game is always the one that most kids vote as their favorite.  (Mine, too!)

The Charades Round is always a LOT of fun!!

In between each point-earning round, the students all got a movement break by participating in a scavenger hunt!  The team captain read the title of a book on the list and then challenged the students to find an object in their home that related to the title.  They had a limited amount of time to get back to their computer and show what they found, and I'm sure a lot of the students got their heart rates up!  It was delightful to see the wide variety of objects they presented to share, and I was very impressed by the creativity they demonstrated!

"Something that holds water" to represent the book Bob

"A star" to represent the book Solar System

"Something summery" to represent the book The Season of Styx Malone

"A pup" to represent the book A Pup Called Trouble

"A donkey" to represent the book Saving Winslow

"A lightning bolt" to represent the book The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

After lunch we all met back up in the "Auditorium Meet" for the awarding of the Champion Reader medals.  Then all of the students met back up in their private team meets to continue playing the games!

Our Champion Readers read ALL 20 books on the RICBA list!

  

 Of course, at the end of our Rooster Games

we needed to declare a winner!

This year the accolades go to Team Purple!!

Congratulations, Team Purple!

There is no prize for being on the winning team.  I emphasize to the students that they are all winners by earning a spot on a team and getting to participate in all the fun.  Traditionally, our wonderful PTO provides the funds for all participants to enjoy a pizza party at the end of the day so that all of the qualifiers win!  Of course, this year a pizza party wasn't going to work, so instead I found fun "pizza prizes" for each participant: a pizza-scented bookmark and a pen shaped like a piece of pizza!

No one complained about missing out on the pizza party when they saw these prizes!

 

It was a really fun event, and it couldn't have happened without the support of some really fantastic people!  Many thanks go out to:

• Our fourth grade teachers, Mrs. Ornburn and Mrs. Young, whose support of the RICBA program has always been enthusiastic!
• Our additional team captains: Mrs. Carrier, Mrs. Pelligrino, Miss Calnan and Miss Bloom!
• The Ashaway School P.T.O. for providing funds to purchase copies of the books as well as prizes for all participants! 
• Mrs. Ward, librarian at Hope Valley Elementary School, for her invaluable assistance during the day of the games!
• Librarians Michelle Bressler (Metcalf Elementary School), Aimee Fontaine (Exeter Public Library), and Stephanie Barta (Louittit Library) as well as Metcalf Elementary School teachers Caitlin Laboissonniere (reading specialist) and Gina Kilday (math specialist).  This remarkable team put together the Google Jamboard/Slide rounds that we used as well as the scavenger hunt list!

Rooster Games 2019

Click any picture to enlarge!

Last week we held the 11th annual Rooster Games!  Fourth graders who read at least 5 of the 20 books nominated for the Rhode Island Children's Book Award qualified to participate.  I'm thrilled to report that this year every single fourth grader earned a spot on a team!

I always kick off the games by presenting Champion Reader medals to the students who read every single book on the list.  This year we had an all-time record: seven students earned the title!  (That's over 20% of our fourth graders!!!)  I'm so proud of them for this remarkable accomplishment!

This year's Champion Readers!

Clockwise from upper left: Team Purple, Team Yellow, Team Blue, Team Red, Team Green and Team Orange!

The morning was so much fun!  We had lots and lot and lots of games (one student admitted he was getting tired!).  Three of the games are set up on Google Slides.  They are projected onto the large screen above the stage, and the students collaborate with their teammates to come up with the answers.  Then they use marker boards to display them and earn points.  Students match pictures from each book to their titles in the Illustration Round, and they answer multiple choice and short answer questions in the Question Round.  In the Object Round they identify which book a displayed object represents.

Students write their answers on marker boards during the Google Slide rounds.

Two of the rounds are "table games".  Students are given a stack of title cards and have to match them to the very first sentence in each book and then to the names of characters from each book.

Students work together to match up cards during the "table top" rounds.

The charades round requires the teams to find an out-of-the-way spot in the gym.  The students take turns acting out words for their teammates to guess.  Doing so earns the team a point, and then they can earn a bonus point by identifying which book the word represents.  This game is always the one that most kids deem as their favorite.  (Mine, too!)

These kids did awesome at charades!

Team Purple earning points during charades!

In between each point-earning round, we kept things lively by playing a series of "lucky rounds".  I reminded the students of the character Toby in The Trail who spends a lot of time thinking about his "rotten luck".  So, just for fun, the students tried out their luck on five different games of chance in order to earn stamps on their papers.  The student with the most stamps at the end of the Rooster Games is the winner and declared the Luckiest Student of the Day!  

"Drawing Straws"
Students pulled a straw out of a cup.  If the tip was colored red they earned a stamp.  If it was green they earned two stamps!

"Egg Hunt"
Students pulled a plastic egg out of a bag and opened it.  If there was a cotton ball inside they earned a stamp. If there were two cotton balls they earned two stamps.

"Pick a Card"
Students picked a card out of a deck  If it was a red card they earned a stamp.  If it was a Queen they earned two stamps.  If it was a Queen of Hearts they earned THREE stamps!

"Marble Grab"
Students pulled a marble out of a bag.  If it was a red marble they earned a stamp.  If it was a green marble they earned two  stamps.

"Toss the Dice"
Students rolled two dice.  If they rolled a "1" they earned a stamp.  If they rolled doubles they earned two stamps.  If they rolled double 1s they earned THREE stamps!

This year we had a three-way tie for students with the most stamps, so we had to do a "marble grab" tie-breaker:

Behold our 

Luckiest Student 
of the Day!!!

 Of course, at the end of our Rooster Games

we needed to declare a winner!   

This year the accolades go to Team Green!!

Team Green: Winners of the 2019 Ashaway School Rooster Games!

There is no prize for being on the winning team.  I emphasize to the students that they are all winners by earning a spot on a team and getting to participate in all the fun.  Plus, our wonderful PTO provides the funds for all participants to enjoy a pizza party at the end of the day!!  As a result, all of the qualifiers win!

PIZZA!!!

It was a really fun event, and it couldn't have happened without the support of our fourth grade teachers, our parent volunteers, and our Ashaway School P.T.O.  My sincerest thanks go out to them all!

Rooster Games 2018

On Thursday our fourth graders participated in the 10th Annual Ashaway School Rooster Games!  All of the students who read at least five of the books on the list of nominees for the Rhode Island Children's Book Award were invited to participate.  The six teams (each a mix of boys and girls from all of the fourth grade classrooms) competed in a variety of games that were based on books from the list.

Rooster Games Champion Readers!

I had five students who earned special recognition by reading all 18 of the RICBA nominees that I bought for Ashaway School.  I started off the games by awarding Champion Reader medals to these students!

Three of the games are set up on Google Slides.  They are projected onto the large screen above the stage, and the students collaborate with their teammates to come up with the answers.  Then they use marker boards to display them and earn points.
 
Students match pictures from each book to their titles in the Illustration Round, they answer multiple choice and short answer questions in the Question Round, and they identify which book is being represented in the Object Round.

In the pictures above you can see the students pointing to a piece of paper.  I give each team two "pointing pages" (letters for Multiple Choice and a list of the book titles for Illustrations and Objects) so they can point to their answers rather than saying them out loud.  The kids are always so excited when they know an answer that they usually blurt it out -- loudly enough that neighboring teams can hear!  It takes some practice, though; their enthusiasm usually wins out at first!  

For the "table top" round, the teams are matching the titles of each book to the very first line in the story.  

A really popular round is Charades.  Students take turns acting out a word for the rest of the team to guess.  If the team guesses the word they earn a point, and if they can then identify which book the word represents they earn a bonus point!  As always, I was really impressed by the creativity on display!

This year my "Mystery Round" became expanded!  In the past I've come up with a game inspired by a book on that year's RICBA nominee list.  We've done the Homophone Hustle for Rain

Our luckiest student!

Reign, an assortment of balloon relays inspired by A Whole New Ballgame, and a "minute to win it" game based on Neighborhood Sharks.  This year I was drawn to Fortune Falls, which was not only the first book I read on the list but also one of my favorites.  The setting of this story is a town where superstitions are all REAL: step on a crack and your mother is going to the hospital with a broken back!  The idea of being "lucky" or "unlucky" is of extreme importance, and that inspired this year's game, Luckiest Student of the Day!  Well, really it was a series of games.  Students tried out their luck on a variety of games of chance in order to earn stamps on their papers.  The student with the most stamps at the end of the Rooster Games is the winner!  (As it turned out we had a four-way tie, so I drew one of the four papers out of a bag to identify who was truly the luckiest!)  

Students pulled a straw out of a cup; if the tip was colored red they earned a stamp!  (If it was green they earned TWO!)

Students pulled a card out of a deck.  If it was a Queen they earned a stamp.  If it was a Queen of Hearts they earned TWO!

Students pulled a marble out of a bag; if it was red they earned a stamp!  If it was green they earned TWO!

Students rolled two dice; if they rolled a 6 they got a stamp.  If they rolled doubles of any number they earned TWO!

Students pulled a plastic egg out of a bag and opened it; if it contained a cotton ball they earned a stamp!

This year our Rooster Games winner was Team Yellow!  There's no prize for winning the Rooster Games, but at the end of the day all of the students who qualified to participate in the games gets to enjoy a pizza party sponsored by our P.T.O., so they truly are all winners!

It was a really fun event, and it couldn't have happened without the support of our fourth grade teachers, our parent volunteers, and our Ashaway School P.T.O.  My sincerest thanks go out to them all! 

Time for a Rooster Booster!

I've been talking up the Rooster Games all year with my fourth graders, and a lot of the kids are super excited about reading their books and qualifying!  A handful of them, however, are letting an awful lot of time slip by without earning many stars on our book tracking poster.  I've seen students procrastinate and then panic as the deadline draws closer, so this year I held a "Rooster Booster mini-games" in the hopes of providing some motivation!

I prepared mini versions of rounds that we play at the real Rooster Games so the students get the chance to experience the fun of the games, just on a smaller scale!  We did an Objects Round, Questions Round, Illustrations Round, and a Settings/Characters Round. 

This year's games will also feature some "games of chance" in honor of RICBA nominee Fortune Falls.  The characters in this story actually have to take a test to determine if they are "lucky" or "unlucky", and this determines which school they will attend!  I thought it would be fun to see who was the Luckiest Kid in Fourth Grade.  One of the games we'll play at the Rooster Games is Egg Hunt.  Each students reaches into a bag full of plastic eggs and selects one to open.  Most of the eggs are empty, but some of them have a cotton ball inside.  Students who found the piece of cotton inside were declared to be "lucky"!  There weren't any prizes, but the kids were excited to see what was inside their eggs!

My goal was for our "Rooster Book" shelf to be empty before the students left on Friday for vacation, and I'm thrilled to report: mission accomplished!  Every single copy of the RICBA nominees were signed out before the end of the day.  We had some rainy days this week, so I'm hopeful that those book borrowers enjoyed some time curled up with a good story.  I'm excited to see how many more stars will be going up on the poster next week! 

At the actual Rooster Games I award medals to the students who read all of the books on the list that I bought for Ashaway School.  To conclude the Rooster Booster event I awarded MVP bookmarks to the student on each team who had read the most books! 

Rooster Booster MVPs!

While I created the "Rooster Booster" games to help motivate the students who needed to read books to qualify for the Rooster Games, I'm hopeful that they also encouraged students who already qualified to keep reading!  I always tell them that the games are even more fun when they recognize more of the books during each round.  Considering how many eager book borrowers I encountered afterward I'm optimistic that it worked!  YAY!