March Madness Book Edition 2015: Championship and Champion Announcement!

My class loved Fish in a Tree and One for the Murphys, by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, as read alouds this year so it was no surprise that both titles were voted into our championship round! 

  

We are huge fans of Lynda Mullaly Hunt and for the past 2 years, One for the Murphys has been in our championship round and won! So I couldn't wait to see how students would vote between two of their favorite read alouds from this year because it was going to be a tough decision.  

 And the champion title is…

 drum roll please…

This is the third class that has voted One for the Murphys to be the champion so if you have not had the honor of reading this book, I highly and strongly suggest that you pick it up to read soon!

Thank you Lynda Mullaly Hunt for bring Carley and Ally into our lives! :)

March Madness Book Edition 2015: Our Final Four Announced!

Students were very excited to vote for our Final Four today! The energy and anticipation in our classroom were high while the results were appearing on their screens as they submitted their votes on Google forms.  I am pleased to announce the four amazing titles that are in our Final Four: 

If you have not had the honor and pleasure of reading these four titles, we highly recommend that you put them at the top of your TBR piles!
The students realized today that 3 out of 4 of the titles were read alouds in our classroom this year! The students love these four books and already know it is going to be extremely tough to choose only one champion!
Stay tuned :)

March Madness Book Edition 2015: Our Elite Eight!

Last week, it was time for us to vote for our Elite Eight! The results from our Google forms survey were close, but the titles in the Elite Eight are….

The students are already trying to make tough decisions about who to vote for Monday for our Final Four and are rallying behind their favorites by recommending them to classmates.  We are working on argument writing during writing workshop, so students are getting savvy in setting up strong arguments for their favorite titles! This has also encouraged students to pick up and read books that they might not usually want to read, and they are finding out that they actually like the book! This has been a great lesson in how we can't judge a book quickly based on the cover or genre because we might really like them if we give them a chance! 

Stay tuned for our Final Four Results! 

March Madness Book Edition 2015: Our Sweet Sixteen!

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read posts I have written in the past about the process of selecting books and voting during March Madness.  

Last week, we narrowed down our 32 books to our Sweet Sixteen! I used Google Forms to create a survey for students to vote for their favorite book in each bracket.  To vote, students checked off the box next to the book of their choice in each bracket. Below is a photo of one section of the voting form.  

When they finished voting, they clicked "submit form" and I received the results.  Students were also able to see the results too once they hit the submit button and they loved seeing the bar graphs for each bracket to see if their book was winning!  Below is a photo of one page of results that students received on their screen after submitting their form.  

After reviewing the results and revoting because of two ties, we officially announced the titles in our Sweet Sixteen and added them to our bulletin board. As you can see from the photo below, this is not the most updated because we need to re-vote for two brackets. The Lemonade War series ended up winning by one vote against Theodore Boone series and The Three Ring Rascals series ended up winning by one vote against The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  

This week we will vote to see which titles will move on to the Elite Eight! Stay tuned! 

March Madness Book Edition 2015! Nominations Revealed!

It is that time of year - March Madness! As some people think about basketball when they hear that term, we think about books in our classroom! For the past 3 years, I have had my students participate in the March Madness Book Edition and students love it each year! To read about the selection and voting process, click here to read my posts describing it in more detail.  

This week, we nominated our 32 books and created the bracket chart below.  Students have been using this chart for book recommendations because they want to be able to vote on as many books as possible.  So this definitely motivates my reluctant readers to read more! Yay! 

Next week, we will begin the difficult voting process of narrowing the titles down from 32 to 16.  Last year, I started using google forms for students to vote and it was a much easier process than tallying them all up on paper so I will continue.  

Stay tuned to hear about the results throughout our March Madness Book Edition! 

March Madness Book Edition 2014: Final Voting Results!

In the month of March, my class participated in March Madness: Book Edition - click here to read my posts about the process of creating the brackets and voting.  

This week, my students voted between The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt to see which one would be the champion for this year.  

For those of you that followed our March Madness last year, you know that these were the SAME two titles in our Championship round last year and there was a tie so we had two winners!  If you have read these books, you understand why the students struggled voting last year and this year! Some students (myself included!) even opted out of voting because they couldn't make a decision between the two!   I love both equally and personally would not be able to vote between the two, so I immediately understood how my students felt when it came down to circle only one on the ballot! 

After tallying up the votes this week and re-counting them, the Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen won by two votes! 

Congratulations to both Jennifer Nielsen and Lynda Mullaly Hunt for writing these fabulous books and bringing them into our lives as readers! Thank you! 

                  

Happy Reading! 

March Madness Book Edition 2014: Championship Round!

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read the posts I wrote this year and last year about how this idea came to action in our classroom and how we got started.  

Last week, the students voted which two books would be in the championship round. 
The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt were the selected books!  

              

These were the same two that were chosen last year for our Championship round! That shows how much kids love these books! As soon as I announced the championship round results, the reaction from students was, "No!! How are we going to choose between those??"  Last year, the reaction from students was the same and it ended up being a tie when we voted for the winner so I will not be surprised if the same happens this year.  Either way, I know it will be very close! 

We will vote on April 7th so stay tuned!! 

March Madness Book Edition 2014: Our Final Four

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read the posts I wrote this year and last year about how this idea came to action in our classroom and how we got started.  

Last week, we voted and narrowed it down to our Final Four! This year, we have had many debates and re-votes because of ties.  There are so many great books in our March Madness Book Edition so it makes it very hard to vote and choose one over another! Below is our March Madness bracket that shows how we are narrowing it down each time.  

The books in our Final Four are: 

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea vs. One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

                                   

Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen vs. The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

     

We will vote this week to see which two will be in our championship round! This is going to be another tough week for voting! 

Stay tuned! :)

March Madness Book Edition 2014: Our Sweet Sixteen!

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read the posts I wrote last year about how this idea came to action in our classroom and how we got started.  

This week, we narrowed down our 32 books to our Sweet Sixteen! We made a ballot and students voted by circling their favorite book within each pair.  After tallying up all the votes, recounting them, and revoting because of two ties, we officially announced the titles in our Sweet Sixteen and added them to our bulletin board.  

Next week, we will vote for our Elite Eight titles. The students have been using our March Madness Book Edition bulletin board as a resource when they choose books to read next so they can vote for them and talk about them with their classmates.  Students are also rallying behind certain titles and highly recommending them to their classmates so "their" title can keep winning and make it to the next round.  

Stay tuned! 

Gearing up for our March Madness Book Edition!

Last year, in the month of March, my class participated in March Madness Book Edition - click here to read my posts about the process of creating the brackets and voting.  

This year, I decided to start the process earlier so my students could have time to read the books they haven't read yet so they are able to vote for more books in March as we narrow it down from 32 books to 1! To begin, my class brainstormed a list of their favorite books.  Then we began voting on the books from that large list to narrow it down to our top 32 books.  

I began using tally marks like I did last year at this point in the process, but then decided to try creating a form on Google Drive for the survey.  I typed in the list of books and shared the form with the students so they could vote on their favorite books they wanted to nominate.  Once all students completed the survey, I printed out the results and a group of students highlighted the 32 titles that had the most votes.  Then a group of students paired up the book matches based on their votes so they were fair matches, but not too close that it would knock out a #1 book in the first round.  

Once the students made the matches, I had another group of students create the large chart with the brackets and we wrote in the titles of the books.  I used post-its to mark the different levels: 32 books nominated; Sweet Sixteen; Elite Eight; Final Four; Championship.  The students have been using this chart to choose books to read and create TBR stacks in preparation for our voting that will begin the first week of March! 

       

Stay tuned to hear the results throughout our March Madness Book Edition!

March Madness Book Edition: Championship Round

In the month of March, my class participated in March Madness: Book Edition - click here to read my posts about the process of creating the brackets and voting.  

Last week, the students voted which two books would be in the championship round - The False Prince Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt were the selected books!  I love both of these books and personally would not be able to vote between the two, so I immediately understood how my students felt when it came down to circle only one on the ballot.  Some students did not exactly follow the directions, but instead voted with their heart and circled both titles - I could not blame them!  I would have done the exact same thing!

After tallying up the votes from the ballots three times with the class, we had our results...a tie!  At first, some March Madness basketball fans did not agree that we could have a tie because there weren't ties in basketball games since they had overtime. However, I explained that they voted and it was very clear they loved both books equally so both books deserved to win their March Madness Championship.  Below is our completed March Madness Book Edition bracket chart with the two deserving winners in the middle!  Thank you Jennifer Nielsen and Lynda Mullaly Hunt for writing these amazing books!  We look forward to reading many more books written by you in the near future so keep on writing! :)

Happy Reading! :)

March Madness Book Edition: Final Four and Final Two!

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read the posts about how this idea came to action in our classroom and how we got started.  

Yesterday, we narrowed down the books down to our Final Four and then we narrowed it down to our Final Two today!  One of my students made the ballots on Google Drive and printed out copies for each student to vote by circling their favorite book within each pair.  He also included each title's seed number next to it.  Yesterday, I tallied up all the votes and officially announced the titles in our Final Four and then I announced the Final Two today!  Below is our March Madness bulletin board with our brackets that we keep adding to after each voting round.  

The books in our Final Four were...

One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, and The False Prince Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen.  

 



The books in our Final Two are (drum roll).... 

Stay tuned! :)

March Madness Book Edition: Our Elite Eight!

This month, my class is participating in our very own March Madness Book Edition!  Click here to read the posts about how this idea came to action in our classroom and how we got started.  

Yesterday, we narrowed down the books down to our Elite Eight!  One of my students made a ballot on Google Drive and printed out copies for each student to vote by circling their favorite book within each pair.  He also included each title's seed number (from 1 -8) next to it.  Yesterday, I tallied up all the votes and officially announced the titles in our Elite Eight and added them to our bulletin board. 

Next week, we will vote for our Final Four titles, which students have admitted is going to be very, very hard to do and even near impossible in some brackets because it is so difficult to choose at this point. The students have been using our March Madness Book Edition bulletin board to help them choose books they want to read next so they can vote for them. Students are also rallying behind certain titles and highly recommending them to their classmates so "their" title can keep winning and make it to the next round. 

Stay Tuned! :)