I have found that usually at about the February/March time of the school year, my kids get a little squirrelly. Living in Michigan means that during these months we are inside for recess, every day is gloomy and dreary, and we are ALWAYS in need of something to SPARK some enthusiasm!! (Especially for my sweet boys that start getting SO restless this time of year, that you would think with all of the pencil tapping on desks, we had a 15 piece drum band in our classroom!)
Alas...a Common Core Math aligned, March Madness Basketball Tournament Project!!!
My kids LOVE this!! It's hilarious because even my super girlie girls can be heard talking rebounds, assists, points, and free throws this time of year!
This March Madness Basketball Tournament Project is 27+ pages long, and includes tables to track certain teams' wins, losses, statistics and more. Students will track the tournament with a real March Madness Tournament bracket!! (SO MUCH FUN!) They will gather data throughout the tournament, and turn this data into fractions, decimals, and percents. They will also write algebraic expressions and equations, find the mean, median, mode and range, write line plots, write to explain patterns in their data, add fractions, pick a favorite player to follow and MUCH, MUCH MORE!!!!! PFEW!!!
Here is a snapshot of ALL the pages included in the project, click HERE or the pictures below to check them out:
Here is a close up of a few of pages:
This is a perfect project for this time of year, to transfer your students' learning of all those math concepts, to one super fun project!! I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine do!!! Click HERE or the picture above to check it out!
*PLEASE NOTE: This project does not necessarily need to be done during the actual March Madness Tournament. Due to the nature of the questions, the majority of the project can be done after the tournament has ended. I have even used this as an enrichment project and/or a data project in the month of January, and used the past year's data to complete the project.
*Also, since students may not have televisions or internet access at home, you can take about 3 minutes during the day (in the morning, after lunch, at the end of the day, etc.) to pull up the tournament wins and losses and allow your students that time to update their brackets.
*It is not year specific, and if the need arises, I will update it from year to year. So, once you purchase it one time, you have it to use for years to come. I have already made the necessary changes for the 2013 tournament that include the changes of the round names.