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.
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| 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
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!)
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| 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!) |
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| 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! |
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| Students pulled a marble out of a bag; if it was red they earned a stamp! If it was green they earned TWO! |
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| Students rolled two dice; if they rolled a 6 they got a stamp. If they rolled doubles of any number they earned TWO! |
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| Students pulled a plastic egg out of a bag and opened it; if it contained a cotton ball they earned a stamp! |
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!
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