Book Madness {March Book Display}

Well friends, I have never been so excited for a sporting event. In fact, this past weekend, I had to employ every bit of knowledge I have about the NCAA tournament (i.e. please read that as very little knowledge). ;) Our newest book display is up and I'm SO excited to share it with you. Even with bullies, Pearl Harbor, Banned Books, and Black History, this book display is my absolute favorite!
My kids {love} sports and between rec teams and AAU teams, it seems they spend most of their afternoons and weekends involved in some type of athletic event. Additionally, being a Kentuckian, basketball is serious business. UK rules. No questions asked. This makes March Madness the perfect event to merge my kids' love of basketball and our love of amazing books. Hence, I present to you Book Madness: A Tournament of Books!

The first job was picking the Sweet 16. Over the course of the year, I have kept a tally of the books students have been reading and writing about, and chose the 16 books that were favorites in our grade. If multiple books in a series showed up on the list, I showcased the first book in the series. Below are a few of our 'chosen' books! :) The full list includes Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Dairy of a Wimpy Kid, I Funny, Football Genius, Stick Dog, The Witches, Number the Stars, Wonder, The One and Only Ivan, Stranded, I Survived, Nancy Drew Clue Crew, Bad Kitty, Bone, and Origami Yoda.

In terms of supplies, you'll need black tape (or paper), book covers (I printed mine using photos online), scissors, a meter stick, and your tournament markers (Elite 8, Final 4, etc.). You may grab the tournament markers here from Google Docs!

Initially I planned on using strips of black paper as the black brackets, but I dreamed Saturday night of using tape (teachers dream of THE weirdest things!). During my Sunday morning trip to Walmart, I picked up a roll of black Gorilla Tape (1 in thick). In case your planning on making a bracket of your own, it took me about 30 feet of tape for my bracket!
Also, note that I did not measure the pieces of tape. I ignored my OCD tendencies and just eyed the pieces...I KNOW. It gave me the heebie-jeebies for the first 12 pieces of tape, but by the time I cut my 30th piece of tape, I got over it.

Here's what the progression of bracket-making looked like. I made a fatal error around the Elite Eight (I made the distance between markers too small to host two books during the Sweet 16 round) that added an additional 20ish minutes to the experience -boo. Thankfully, it was an easy fix and kids don't notice when one side of the bracket is a few inches shorter than the other. ;)

After finishing up the bracket with the Sweet 16 books in place, I needed to make the basketballs for the display header. Using my handy dandy Martha Stewart Circle Cutter

(BEST invention ever), I cut 6.5 inch circles and drew basketball lines on them using black marker...yes, I did have to Google what a basketball looked like. ;) Then, using the school's dye-cut machine and a glue stick, I added the letters to the overlapping basketballs.

As part of the voting, students are only allowed to participate in the vote if they've read the two books facing off. To make sure everyone has access to the books, I put any copies of the books or their accompanying series top of our shelves. As students finish these favorites, they'll return them to the stands for others to read!

My kids are PUMPED and are reading as fast as they can to make it through a *few* more books before our vote for the Elite 8!

We'll vote for out Elite 8 on March 30th (as the Elite 8 Games are taking place on March 28th - 30th), then the Final 4 on April 5th, and the Championship game (vote) will be on April 9th. I'll set up a Survey Monkey so students can easily vote at the beginning of class.

In addition to voting for the best books of our school year, students will also fill out their own bracket predicting the winners. For every correct answer, students will receive a point. The 3 students with the most points will receive a free book from our next Scholastic order! :) We'll fill out our brackets with the start of the tournament this Friday!

So, when all these parts come together it looks a little like this... :)

Well friends, I am so excited! It was priceless to see my kids' faces this morning and I loved the peering eyes of 3rd graders as they passed our door. The halls were definitely a buzz, and my kids are so excited to power read through the books they haven't yet experienced!

So, what do you think? Do you incorporate March Madness into your classroom? Do you set-up your own book bracket? If so, I'd love to hear about it. :) Oh happy day!