Saturday, April 12, 2014

Celebrate: March Book Madness

                           

                      

I love Twitter for so many reasons. One of which is the ability to have 1 min PD from a community of brilliant educators any time. So when I saw this tweet from Tony Keefer, I was very intrigued:

                                     


 I have always been a huge March Madness fan and a huge book fan. The combination of these two had my mind blown! I couldn't wait to get started. Well this week we had out championship vote. Here is my list of celebrations for March Book Madness 2014: 

1. My classroom is across from the bathrooms. The books we chose had maximum exposure and even some students coming in to ask if they could read them. Many times, I would walk out of my room to kids staring at the books or having discussions with other about them. 

2. After our initial seeding, some books were ranked low because students judged by their cover. Those were some of the books that went the furthest. Hopefully a valuable lesson!

3. The students became so invested in the books they wanted to win. Both a good thing and a bad thing. When their book lost, they took it a little to hard!

4. The deeper thinking the kids did about the books never ceased to amaze me! They would try to reason against popular books being up against other popular books. Their excuses ranged from genres not matching, to the same illustrator going up against one another, to a "think and feel" book up against a funny book. When they are trying to passionately convince others of their opinion, their thinking becomes so much deeper!

5. The noise level in the classroom at the time of the championship vote was out of control! I have never felt a quiet room was necessary and the louder the better in certain cases. This was one of those cases. People walking by couldn't help but stop and stare. 

6. Though there could only be one winner, I know all the books were winners in each child's heart. 

These are just some of our celebrations. I can't wait to make this an annual tradition in my classroom! 



2 comments:

  1. I've always wanted to do a March Book Madness, but haven't managed to get it organized. Good for you for doing it. It sounds like it's generating great excitement!

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  2. It sounds like you had a very successful March Book Madness experience. I love this idea, but have felt it too daunting to do with my 8th graders. I need to rethink this and maybe start on some plans for next year...

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