March Madness

If you live in an area where basketball is a keystone of the culture - or you have colleagues that you work with that support a team (loudly and proudly), you inevitably know about March Madness.

I love the undying loyalty that comes with team sports. I am a Tampa Bay Buccanners fan (yes, I know that's football - from 1999 after learning about Mike Alstott when I lived in Lafayette Indiana.

I don't LOVE basketball. I do love sports but this is not a sport I was raised with any awareness about. As an immigrant from South Africa, our big sports were Rugby, Cricket, Squash and girls played Netball in school.

I moved in 1992 and attended 12th grade for a second time. Primarily becuase my grades in South Africa did not translate well as acceptable college material (even though I was immensely proud to earn the grades I did). That's a whole other story for a different time.

A pretty significant cultural movie came out that year - that left me wondering if indeed I did know English, as students were saying things like: 

When they met Alice Cooper: “WE’RE NOT WORTHY! WE’RE NOT WORTHY!”

"Excellent!!" or less appropriate phrases like "Schwing!"

Yes, you guessed it! Waynes World.

Without understanding what movie everyone was quoting and why - I could not connect with my peers. I needed to know the cultural norms and the impact of movies and media is even more prevalent now.

As a high school English Learner PLC, we opened with a March Madness Bracket activity.

Yet instead of picking basetball team victors, I went around the room and asked each teacher to provide the name of a book/tv show or movie from the following 4 genres: Drama, Romance, Comedy and Romance. We filled in the "sweet sixteen" portion of the bracket as there are only 4 teachers in this group. They they went on selecting their winners from each genre and finally finding their one winner. Selections were difficult if they didn't know the movie (I mean what teacher has time to watch TV let alone movies). Before I heard the winners, I asked each person to report out their final 2 and why. Isn't that the process behind persuasive writing and speaking. Defending a choice, a winner, one thing over another. 

In 2 out of the 4 cases, their original pick one the brackets. However it was interesting to hear why the other 2 had winners that were not their primary selection.

Not only did we walk away with recommendations of movies to enjoy over Spring Break - but pracitcal ways to use this across content classroom.

What language is needed to do this activity with your students?

Level 1 students in writing can draw picture and label, they can list.

Understanding categories and headers can be done using maps, or fruits, vegetables.

Higher level students can get criteria for their selections (must be a fruit you have eaten, must be a book you have read from start to finish etc).

Instead of student feeling lost right now during March Madness, how about doing a bracket activity. Not only will you learn about your students - but they can defend their choices and learn from each other.