March Madness

March Madness is upon us! Our class voluntarily participates in the NCAA bracket challenge every year! Students have the opportunity to fill out their brackets early next week before the tournament gets under way! Filling out the brackets is a great at home conversation. Ideas to talk about are the seeds and the team statistics. Often students think the number 1 seed always win. However we all hear of those Cinderella teams who show us with heart, determination, and teamwork is all about! Students also learn about predictions in a real world context. I have heard over the years that weekends become fun filled basketball watching as families sit down to view some of the games. I always love this time of year and hope some of our students will join me in participating in March Madness!

We are also doing a little March Madness bracketology in reading! Students are working in small teams to determine the BEST picture book out of a stack of 16. Books were pitted against each other. Using a bracket similar to the NCAA bracket students are determining which books wins out of each pair. Then they will pair winners against winners until one book is left standing. There are some great titles such as Strictly No Elephants, I Love You More Than Moldy Ham, I Love You the Purplest, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, Probuditi, and Get Red to name a few. Students will go on an adventure with Knuffle Bunny, a bug detective, and Pedro Martinez. I cannot wait to see the students’ thinking around the book they choose! I encourage you to discuss this with them!

I wonder which book will win the tournament? I encourage you to ask your child about which books he or she likes and why or why not. They have very strong opinions of things.