Changes to the Red Dot voting and Readers Cup this year

This year voting for the Red Dot books is for 2 months, not one week.

The online form will be on the website -- reddotawards.com -- starting from March 1st and closing on May 1st.

Remember: each school can collect votes in their own way.  You can direct your students to the Red Dot website - or create your own vote catchers.  You then report your results to me -- and I will email you back a total for your school, including any submitted online.  The overall winner for the whole network will be announced on the website and here.

Our search for the 2015-2016 Red Dot shortlist titles will begin much earlier.  The goal is to announce the lists in early June.  How to suggest titles (besides sending us an email!) will be explained in the near future.

There are even more changes happening on the Readers Cup front.  After last year's event, several of the participating librarians had extended conversations about how to improve it and make it more than just quick regurgitation of memorized information.

Consequently the Readers Cup Committee met in October 2015 with the express purpose of updating the format of the event in order to:

• allow for a greater number of students to participate
• promote higher level thinking/reading skills
• promote creativity
• allow students interaction across schools
• have more winners

After much discussion it was agreed schools can enter up to TWO teams per category, rather than just ONE.

In terms of the quiz, besides short answers on key plot points and multiple choice questions, there will be:

• kid generated questions
• inferential/deeper meaning questions
• questions based on supplementary information provided by the Committee 4 weeks before the competition (e.g.,  about the author, the country of the author, etc.)

 There will also be other ways to win -- in addition to the quiz portion:

• Best Book Trailer - prepared and submitted by schools ahead of time, shown in between rounds. Each trailer no more than 1 minute long. Marked out of 10
• Best Alternate Book Cover - prepared and submitted by schools ahead of time

Having a mixed team quiz is still under consideration, where students from different schools would be mixed together.

Watch this blog -- and the Red Dot website Readers Cup page (link here) -- for ongoing updates.

Contact Barb Reid, the chair of the Readers Cup committee, if you have questions about Readers Cup -- bre@uwcsea.edu.sg.

Contact Katie Day, the chair of the Red Dot committee, if you have questions about the Red Dot awards -- kda@uwcsea.edu.sg