My students have voted, here are the final results from our 2008 Library Book Election:
Pre-K:
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems
Runner Up: Not a Box by Antoinette Portis (lost by 2 votes)
Tag: voting
I’m joining Blog the Vote, a really interesting project going on over at Chasing Ray, GottaBook, and Lee Wind’s blog. They are asking bloggers to post through Election Day about why they vote (no partisan bashing of the candidates, please). So, why do I vote?
Before I list the books, let me just tell a little side story here. Originally I had 5 books on the list, just like with pre-k and kindergarten. Paper Bag Princess was the 5th book, but I read it to one class and decided to leave it off the list. At the end of the book the princess decides not to marry Prince Ronald and calls him a “bum.” One of my more outspoken little first graders announced, “That’s what my mommy says about my daddy all the time!” She was very excited and wanted to tell the class all about it (which obviously I stopped before she got started). Another kid thought “bum” was a bad word. When I did my elementary student teaching, the kids loved this book and I never had a bad reaction. And I love it, too. But I decided not to read it with any more classes to avoid the possibility of phone calls from parents!
So when choosing books for kindergarten, I picked stories that were a little more sophisticated than pre-k. But I still went with memorable, funny books that I thought were right for their level of understanding. The concepts are still pretty straightforward (behaving in the library, behaving when your parents are away, being different, being nice), but I don’t know that pre-k would have enjoyed these books as much as kindergarten.
I pre-selected the books for pre-k, kindergarten, and 1st grade in my school book election. I read all the stories out loud to the kids, and I’ve made up picture ballots for them to vote from next week. While grades 2-5 will have their final vote in our elimination-style election, the younger kids will just vote once from the books I’ve read them.
Last week my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders nominated their favorite books for our library book election. I tallied all the nominations, and this week I gave the kids special ballots for each grade with the top 4 books. They picked two out of the 4, and next week I’ll give them a final ballot with the 2 remaining books facing off in a showdown for favorite.
My big plan for the library this month is a book election to coincide with the presidential election. It gives me a chance to talk about voting with the kids, and it also lets them tell me what books they love. That will help me put together a book order at some point soon. I’m doing this election with all the classes, from pre-k through 5th.