March Madness in the Classroom

One of the best ways to engage your learners is my finding a topic that is interesting to them or happening in real time and bringing it into your classroom. March Madness is a perfect example of this!  The kids love sports and basketball, but you can also do March Madness activities right around the time that their parents are at home talking about March Madness, hello engagement!

Tournament of Books

One of the most popular ways to celebrate March Madness in classroom is by having a tournament of read alouds! The way this works is you decide on a set of books that you will read for the month. Then, you will read one/two books a day and vote on which one is best. They will keep moving up the bracket until you crown the winner.

You could also just have kids vote on books that they have read in class or by themselves this year instead of reading each day! The Madness Classroom activities with a tournament of books is endless!

You can check out these examples I found to show you what one would look like!

From The Brown Bag Teacher

From Ashleigh’s Education Journey 

March Madness Reading Challenge

Want a super fun March Madness classroom activities? Well the March Madness reading challenge is the answer! In this challenge students will read rigorous and engaging passages in order to answer questions and win the tournament.

Students will become a basketball team and you will complete a march madness tournament. Each round two teams will play, but everyone will read and answer the questions. I have the students pick which team they want and even make signs and posters to hold up!

If they get the question correct they shoot to determine the winning team for that round. Come on shooting to win March Madness in the classroom?! EPIC!

(There are four different questions for each passage)

All of the other teams will earn points for their correct answer, even though they are not shooting in that round. Only the team up on the bracket will be shooting.

The final team is the March Madness classroom champion.

The team with the most points is the MVP of the tournament, this is how you help all the students want to be involved the entire time!

I promise you this March Madness classroom activity will not disappoint!

>>Check it out here<<<

Read Alouds

Here are a list of some great read aloud suggestions that have a basketball theme! One of the best ways to bring March Madness into the classroom is to read great literature!

Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan

Dream Big by Deloris Jordan

Hoop Genius by John Coy

Cam Jansen and the Basketball Mystery by David A. Adler

Slam Dunk by Sharon Robinson