March Madness in the Library

 

While the littles enjoyed a mont of Dr. Seuss in March, 2nd-5th grade participated in Library March Madness. I read about this online last spring, and knew then that somehow I would do it too. I read about lots of different ways of focusing on library books for March Madness and tweaked some ideas to make them work for me. You can see the empty bracket that succeeded in getting everyone excited about what was coming. It helped that on opening day of the tournament I word a referee shirt and a whistle!

To begin, I had each student in the included grades write the titles of three picture books they liked. I took these lists (and a few of my favorites) and came up with a list of 32 titles. I then put these 32 titles head-to-head on the tables and wrote out a ballot for the kids to use in voting on their favorites in each pair. I also instructed them to circle the one title of the book which they believed would win the entire tournament. We tallied the ballots, and the 16 books that made it to the next round were put on the bulletin board. When it was announced in morning assembly on Friday morning of the first week of voting that the titles had been posted, there was a frantic rush to see which books made it through the first round. Sounds of "My book made it!" echoed through the hall.

The second week, the students received new ballots and voted on 8 pairs of books. The voting continued through the month of March until we had one winner. And the winner is... The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt. Second grade really pulled it through at the end when it was up against the ever-popular Green Eggs and Ham. For a short while, I was afraid that I Don't Want to Read This Book was going to win, but my fears were for naught. (Whew!) Wouldn't that be a great title to put up as the most popular book?!

This was a fun project, and the kids enjoyed it. There were ten who actually circled the correct book way back at the beginning, and those ten received a prize. I am already thinking of different ways to do this next year and already have some good thoughts, but I won't tell yet!