GCBA Voting

We are getting very close to being ready to vote for our favorite for the Georgia Children's Book Award! This year we were able to read more nominees than in years past and I'd like to thank James Campbell (a.k.a. "Mr.C") from Lee Street Elementary for helping with that! He put together a great resource that he shared on his website that we have been using all year as we made our way through the nominees. If you want to take a look at his site go to http://clayton.114.schooldesk.net/LibraryMedia/GAChildrensBookAward/PictureBookNOMINEESfor2012/tabid/10357/Default.aspx.

Usually when we vote we are at the Smart Board making tallies. I have found, however, that this lends itself to friends voting for certain books just because their BFF did! This year, to hopefully get more valid results, I'm having the students cast a "secret ballot". After we review all the books, I will give each student something small like a bean or popcorn kernel, etc. and they will cast their ballot by dropping it into the bag for the book they want to vote for. Once all classes have voted, I'll open up the bag and count the beans to see who our winner is. I think this will be fun for the students and also they won't feel pressured to vote for the book that everyone else is voting for. We'll be doing this after our Spring Break - I'll be sure to post to let you know how it all worked out! Thanks for reading! ~D

Here's a picture of my "secret ballot" bags for the nominees.