The great thing about this project is that it can be implemented at any time of the year. I had a teacher share with me that she used last year's brackets and did this project back in January!! It can also be an independent home project or an at school whole class project. I plan to use it both ways since our Spring Break starts next week. So, I plan to slowly teach my kids each part of the project in order for them to complete some of it at home on their own.
I always start by teaching my students how to fill out the brackets. Some students have parents at home that are into sports and shared with them their own brackets, but this year my kids needed a bit more help. It was super easy and because 2 of our state's teams are in the tournament this year, I had their FULL attention!
Once the students understood how the bracket system worked, the next morning I gave them time after their morning work to update their brackets. Many of my students don't have access to televisions or computers at home, and despite the fact that we only have 2 laptops in our classroom this took my students about 3 minutes.
On Monday we will do a little cross-curricular work and tie in social studies in order to see which states have teams playing in the tournament this year. This will then kick off our study of probability, which my high kids have been begging me for this year!
Click HERE to check out the March Madness Activities above!
On another note, since we only have 3 days of school this week, I prepped these super cute writing projects from my Spring Persuasive Writing Pack.
This pack is full of great stuff to get us through those crazy spring months! There are prompts about spring break, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and I've even gotten a head start and started thinking about Mother's Day, too!
You can check my Spring Persuasive Writing Pack HERE!
Being that I am in the middle of packing boxes, hiring painters and plumbers in preparation for our big move, I will thank myself in May when I drop dead of exhaustion! ;)
What are you up to blogger friends!?