March Book Madness Classroom Activity

Do you love reading diverse books for March is Reading Month?! Have you ever tried doing March Book Madness in your classroom?! I am here to help you get started!

This March Book Madness Classroom Activity is so easy to incorporate into any grade level AND the students LOVE it! Even better, you can do this activity year after year with little to no prep!

I started doing this as a 2nd grade teacher, however, I think this would be great for any grade level and age group!

How to get started:

First, my teammates and I each chose four books that we wanted the students to explore. I think choosing books from different genres and a wide range of diversity is the best for “March is Reading Month/Read Across America”! Since creating this, I chose different titles and genres. Check out this blog post HERE for some book ideas.

I used a tri-fold poster board , and the following materials to create my bracket board:

-washi tape (for the border)

-velcro dots

-printed, cut and laminated the book covers

–March Book Madness Classroom Kit

This March Book Madness Classroom Kit is a perfect way to help you get started creating your bracket board! It includes headings, and clip art to decorate your board!

How March Book Madness works:

We began with one bracket (4 books). I read them aloud to my students with questions to keep them engaged and thinking while reading. Once reading the two books per bracket, the students then had to vote on their favorite book. Whichever book won, it was sent to the next round/”bracket.”

After each book in the bracket are read and voted, we would move to the next two books that were facing off. I will either play a read aloud of the book through YouTube or Epic, so that my students are getting a variation of the read aloud.

Once a book is chosen for the “final four”, the students will listen to the book read aloud again (sometimes a guest reader will read it or I will ask a student helper to read with me) and complete an activity to correlate with the book! Students will then vote for their favorite “final two.”

This is continued until a winner is chosen! Once a winning book is chosen, I ask the students to write a letter to someone in the building convincing them to read it to their class (this ties in nicely with our persuasive writing unit).

I think this March Book Madness Classroom Activity is SO fun and keeps things engaging until that spring break we are all waiting for!

Enjoy!