March Madness: A Tournament of Books

Our kids {love} sports and between rec teams and AAU teams, it seems they spend most of their afternoons and weekends involved in some type of athletic event. Additionally, being a Kentuckian, basketball is serious business. This makes March Madness the perfect event to merge our love of basketball and amazing books.

Over the course of the year, I have kept a tally of the books students have been reading and writing about, and chose the 16 books that were favorites. If multiple books in a series showed up on my list, I showcased the first book in the series. Below are a few of our 'chosen' books! :) The full list includes Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Dairy of a Wimpy Kid, I Funny, Football Genius, Stick Dog, The Witches, Number the Stars, Wonder, The One and Only Ivan, Stranded, I Survived, Nancy Drew Clue Crew, Bad Kitty, Bone, and Origami Yoda.

As each round of the 'real' March Madness tournament takes place, we'll vote for which books progress in our own tournament. As part of the voting, students are only allowed to participate in the vote if they've read the two books facing off. To make sure everyone has access to the books, I have put any copies of the books or their accompanying series top of our shelves. As students finish these favorites, they'll return them to the stands for others to read!

We'll vote for out Elite 8 on March 30th (as the Elite 8 Games are taking place on March 28th - 30th), then the Final 4 on April 5th, and the Championship game (vote) will be on April 9th. I'll set up a Survey Monkey so students can easily vote at the beginning of class.

In addition to voting for the best books of our school year, we'll will also fill out our own brackets predicting the winners. For every correct answer, students will receive a point. The 3 students with the most points will receive a free book from our next Scholastic order! :) We'll fill out our brackets with the start of the tournament!

So, when all these parts come together it looks a little like this... :)

Well, I am definitely excited to see the 'winner' of our tournament. I would guess that Wonder and Diary of a Wimpy Kid will be the final contenders, but honestly, it is a complete toss up! Make sure to encourage your child to finish up any book on his/her list before we start voting at the end of March. :)