CREATING SURVIVAL CANADA
This is a lot of work so don’t
attempt to do it at the last minute.
1. Choose the number of book covers you
need. You could do this by classroom or
advisor. I had 35 advisors which meet
every morning. Our homeroom teachers
don’t see their homeroom classes every day.
2. Decide whether you will celebrate
Canadian authors or all authors. I chose
to do Canadian authors as we were celebrating I Love To Read Canadian.
[This could be done with sports books (fiction and non-fiction) and use
Olympics or sports trivia ].
3. In power point enlarge your chosen
book covers to full page size. When printed this will leave a ½ inch border
completely around the cover.
4. Print the covers on cardstock; bond
paper will not give the support needed.
5. I was lucky enough to have an Ellison
machine and puzzle die cut to create the puzzles from these covers. If you don’t you can create a puzzle
schematic and print it on the reverse (sample
included) and manually cut the pieces out. The number of pieces could co-ordinate with
the number of days you will be running the competition.
6. Don’t have the puzzle pieces go
completely to the paper edge so you have a frame for the puzzle pieces to go
into. The frame can also give clues as
to where the puzzle piece belong. i.e.
you can go into the edge varying degrees giving more white space on some pieces
than others.
7. Once the puzzle pieces are cut out it
leaves a very flimsy frame so you need to glue that frame to a second piece of
cardstock. Make sure you label the back
of this frame with the same number allocated to the envelope of pieces.
8. You may want to number your puzzle
pieces according to each puzzle. I did
35 puzzles and each one was A thru Z, then AB thru AJ Each piece was then numbered 1 thru 20.
i.e. A-1, X-5, and AB-14, placing
an underscore under the numbers so they were not read incorrectly. Place the 20 puzzle pieces into an envelope
labelled with the same number.
9. After cutting, numbering, and gluing
-- have everything laminated. This will allow the puzzles to be re-used
multiple times. i.e. I could use these same puzzles next year with a different
quiz by placing the puzzles in different advisor groups.
10.
Then
the task of cutting out the laminating.
Yes, this takes a long time but my volunteers could have done this for
me as they would not know or recognize the covers selected.
11.
Don’t
laminate the enlarged book covers prior to cutting as the laminate may not
stick to the pieces after they are cut apart.
It also makes it difficult to number the puzzle pieces after the
fact. Since I had 1 week to create 10 additional
cover puzzles I did this and had to use cut up labels to number the pieces and
using the Ellison machine was difficult.
12.
When
everything is cut out again and separated by puzzle you need to add some
2-sided tape (just a small piece) to the back of each piece. This will allow the students to fasten the
puzzle piece onto the puzzle frame.
13.
Each
group to receive the puzzle frame may mount it on a bulletin board or wall for
easy access.
14.
I
located some survival trivia online and chose a question per school day and
placed the question in the daily announcements.
Each advisor group has their own puzzle and pieces (and answer sheet) so
they can have a discussion and come to a consensus on the answer. Once answered they may designate 1 person to
remove a puzzle piece and everyone can help figure out where it goes in the
puzzle. Depending on the piece they pull
they may / may not have difficulty placing the first piece or two.
15.
Once
they figure out the book title and author they can come to the Library with
their answer.
16.
The
first advisor group to correctly determine their book cover and author would
receive a prize. i.e. ours will receive
popcorn for the advisor.
17.
Make
sure you give explicit directions to the staff involved in each group prior to
beginning the competition.
