Reading Link Challenge: literacy, collaboration & enthusiasm = Pure Fun!

Chartwell Gr 4/5 ‘s returned to school on this bright Tuesday morning, post Spring Break, not with dragging feet and reluctant angst, but instead with the SPRING of reading excitement in their step!! It was time for our Reading Link Challenge, our own version of a Literary March Madness…so to speak!

The Reading Link Challenge involved a partnership between four West Vancouver Schools​ and the West Vancouver Memorial Library. It is a collaborative, fun, and engaging way to read books and answer questions in a ‘Battle of the Books’ format.

Through an ongoing close collaboration between Chartwell Teacher Librarian Doni Gratton and Michelle Yule, students in Divisions 5 and 6 were encouraged to read 6 selections of grade level titles including “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda” by Tom Angleberger to “Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library” by Chris Grabenstein.

This club was open to interested students in grades 4 and 5 and ran as a lunch time activity with the support of our “super Teacher Librarian”, Ms. Gratton. Students   met once every 2-3 weeks to begin with but, as the competition drew near, meetings became more frequent.

Teams today were comprised of 6-7 members and questions were asked about each of the six books from the given list. Some students may have only read one book and become an expert on that while other keeners will able to read all six selections.

Today’s challenge, involved Chartwell’s three Gr ⅘ teams, 1) The Bookworm Army, 2) The Awesomeez, and 3) The Library Masters.

After a question was posed by our guest Quizmaster from WV Memorial Library, Michelle Yule, team members conferred about each question posed and a runner sent the team’s response to the judge within a 30 second time frame.
Each correct answer from a team was awarded a point. There are three rounds of ten questions. Chartwell teams competed against each other in a today’s school based  competition and  the winning team will go to the inter-school competition at the West Vancouver Memorial Library where they will compete against winning teams from 3 other elementary schools in WVSD
At the time of this blog going to press we were unable to determine a winning team due to the tight race between all 3 teams but we will update our community in this week’s upcoming E Bulletin!

Congratulations to all 3 teams, all of the Div 4 & 5 participants and thanks to Ms. Gratton, and Ms. Yule for their support in this terrific initiative. Goodl luck in the District Final on April 19th @ West Van Memorial Library at 1:00 pm.
PS. Last minute addition….Library Masters took 1st place by a mere 2 points answering 28 out of 30 questions correct!! Amazing Job!