Biography Bowling

Looking for a fun way to promote the biography section of your library? 

Why not try...

This is an activity I try to do every other year or so to teach the arrangement of books in this section, but I am waaayyyyyyy behind in introducing biographies to my students this year (the pictures are from a few years ago). Normally we do Biography Bowling in February, somewhere between the birthdays of Abe and George, but that just didn't happen this year. No worries, though--we can still bowl in April, right?!

First I borrow bowling equipment from my P.E. coach (who is AWESOME--he lets me use hula hoops, footballs, and basketballs for different library activities throughout the year). I then type names of famous people from my biography section onto sheets of labels and attach them to bowling pins.  I also run spine labels to match the biography names and attach those to the bottom of the pins.


Biography Bowling is fairly simple to set up once you make the bowling lane (made entirely out of bulletin board paper). The most labor-intensive part for me was the yellow end because of the black circles for placing the pins. I did laminate that piece to save me from making it again.


To play the game, start with all bowling pins lining the sides. Students take turns grabbing a pin and going to the biography section to find a matching book to the sticker on the pin. When a match is made, the pin gets placed on the yellow paper on a black dot. This part is timed, and I usually allow more time for the younger grades to find the matches than the older grades. When the time is up we count how many pins are on the yellow paper (the number of biographies the kids found to match the names on the bowling pins). That number is recorded on a sheet with other teachers' names from the same grade level. Here's a sample sheet showing that Mrs. Jones' class found 29 matching biographies during the allotted time:

Each "x" is just for show to make the score sheet look similar to a real one.

Then I tell the kids that their teacher will get one shot to knock down the pins in the yellow area. This invariably turns the students into super cheerleaders for the classroom teacher (who is more than a little nervous at this point)! Check out the before and after pictures from a teacher who got a strike. I just love the facial expressions and body language of her kids, don't you?!!

Once the teacher bowls, we count how many pins were knocked down and put that number in the "Bonus" column before totaling the two scores. 

Here is an example of what a finished score sheet for one grade level might look like:

In the past, I have announced the top scoring class for each grade level on announcements. 

It's such a hit with my students that they always beg for another week of bowling! Of course there's always a huge increase in the amount of biographies checked out when we do Biography Bowling, and that counts as a lucky "strike" for this librarian!

~Swersty