I’m not a basketball (or any other sport) fan. But it is almost March, and that means the college basketball championships will soon be upon us. Since bracket fever seems to grab everyone and envelope everything, I wanted a way for my students to gain first-hand experience with them and begin to understand how the system works.
The Why
Honestly, I don’t care at all if my students are or become basketball fans. However, I do care if they understand what is happening around them and gain the knowledge and vocabulary necessary to join in conversations with their English-speaking peers (if they so choose). Therefore, I try to find creative ways for them to gain first-hand experience with various aspects of our culture. In March, one of those culturally significant things in the USA is March Madness.
The How
One of the ways to participate in March Madness is by filling out a bracket. Many of my ELLs have no (or little) experience with the type of bracket used in the tournament, so I wanted to give them some practice with it. To do this, I decided to hold our own Sweet Sixteen Tournament. The first year I did this, I took the word sweet very literally, and I bought sixteen different flavors of ice cream and then randomly matched them up on a bracket that I printed and used the school’s poster maker to enlarge. On Tournament Day, we taste-tested all sixteen flavors, voting after every match-up on our favorite. The winner? Brookie.
The following year, I was at a different school that had more students, and the cafeteria manager wasn’t too keen on my storing sixteen tubs of ice cream in her freezer, so I changed our field of competition to Oreos. Did you know there are over 80 flavors of Oreos in the world? Neither did I. Once again, I bought sixteen flavors and made a bracket. Since this school didn’t have a poster maker, I just made copies for each student to complete as we went. Once again, we taste-tested all sixteen flavors and voted after each match-up. The winner this time? Chocolate.
Other options for your March Madness competition include flavors of pop/soda, candy bars (get the fun size), hard candy, crackers, or potato chips. Anything that has at least sixteen different varieties can be used. Or, if you are short on funds and/or time, shorten it to just the Elite Eight and only try eight varieties.
The Educational Justification
When I was doing this, I was blessed with administrators who valued cultural experiences and trusted my education judgment (one even came and joined in the fun!). If you need to provide some type of educational justification or simply want to add in a more academic component, there are several ways you can easily accomplish this. Students can practice adjectives by describing the different varieties of colors and flavors orally or in writing. Another option for a writing component is to write news “reports” about the faceoffs and final results of the tournament. You can even bring in some math practice by describing the vote results as ratios or percentages! The possibilities are endless.
I’ll admit that this is one of my more out-of-the-box ideas, but it is also a really fun activity that I highly recommend. There were times when dietary restrictions made finding a food or drink to use for our tournament a little more challenging, but there was never a year I couldn’t come up with something. Give it a try with your students, and let me know how it goes. Happy teaching, everyone!
The Gaming Grammarian 