Monday, November 5, 2007

assistance is on its way

today we played a game that I CREATED called "are you smarter than a librarian." it is surprisingly similar to "are you smarter than a 5th grader," except that the kids battled yours truly in a match of wits. there were two teams and one team tied me and the other was a point behind. very fun. the kids were very impressed when i knew the name of the gypsy woman who befriends quasimoto in victor hugo's "hunchback of notre dame." they of course got grade appropriate questions which were much easier.
and get this, today, with no prior notice, i got a new activities assistant! no, no one emailed me to tell me she was hired and was starting today. anyway, she showed up and at first i was wary, but she seems to be good. she is a HUGE improvement from my last activities assistant who hated children and refused to do activities with them. curious. very curious.

4 comments:

Lisa said...

That sounds great - the New Zealand version of the TV show has just started and the questions seem a lot easier than the American version - I am mildly insulted. Anyway I'm a Childrens Librarian too so was wondering if I could get some more specific info on how you ran the session so maybe I could steal it? Or we could trade...

Miss Dewey Decimal said...

okay, here is how i ran the game:
i broke the kids up into two teams, but you could do more teams depending on how many kids you have. my library happens to own this game called "brain quest" which is trivia questions and there are different cards for each grade (1st-7th). i would ask a team a grade appropriate question ... if they answered it correctly they get a point. if they answered it incorrectly the other team(s) could "steal" and try to answer it. then the team that was asked the question would have the opportunity to ask ME a question (i got them all several books of trvia for adults). if i got the question right i got a point. i drew a grid on our dry erase board with all the categories, each category listed 3 times, so that they could choose which category they wanted when it was their turn. so this went on until all the categories were used up. then i asked them an extra-hard bonus question worth two points. the winning team all got book giveaways i had, and the other team got bookmarks as a consolation prize. so that's pretty much it. if you have any good programs to share let me know!

Lisa said...

Thanks so much - one of our most successful games is the invention ladder. We have a ladder drawn on a big chart and pass out slips of paper with inventions on them - toothpaste, car, tv etc. Then we split the kids into groups, get them to find out who invented their invention (using some easy reference books we have put aside). Then they have to rank their inventions - they have so much fun discussing whether toothpaste is more or less important than dog biscuits.

fifi said...

I'm very curious, indeed. Just how many teeth did she have?

And does that mean that the kids are as smart & almost as smart, respectively, as you, Miss Librarian?