Engaging students with a competitive twist during these middle school ELA March Madness activities.
Whether you’re into basketball or not, March Madness can just be a really fun time of the year to try something new to engage your students.
This time of year is a perfect opportunity to bring the excitement of brackets and competition into your middle school ELA classroom. Most of you only have a couple months left in the school year. You’ve taught most of the key concepts for the year, and students may be starting to get a little bored with the typical practice and review that you’ve been doing as you gear up for the testing season.
By tapping into the competitive spirit of students, you can create engaging activities that bring new vibes to the classroom while also reinforcing essential skills like argument writing, critical thinking, and collaboration.
Here are a few creative ways to incorporate the March Madness theme into your ELA curriculum:
#1 | Debating Arguments
Transform your classroom into a debate arena with a March Madness-inspired argument-writing project.
How It Works:
- Create a list of thought-provoking topics. Do this as a full class at the beginning of the tournament so that students will have some buy-in and input, but don’t let them choose their topics. Instead, randomly draw for seeding and who will be taking lead on each topic.
- Pair students up and assign them opposing sides. Each student writes and presents their argument.
- After the presentations, the class votes on the most convincing argument. The winner advances to the next round of the bracket.
- Continue the process until there’s a final winner!
Optional Upgrade: Throughout the process, encourage students to commentate on the arguments that have been debated. Just as sports analysts report and assess every move players and coaches make, your students can also analyze their bracket through video and/or blogging or writing practices.
#2 | Battling Books
Get students excited about reading by hosting a book battle.
How It Works:
- Choose 16 books, short stories, or poems (or let students nominate their favorites).
- Create a bracket and have students vote on which piece they think should advance based on specific criteria like theme, characters, or emotional impact.
- Encourage students to read or skim through the works to make informed decisions.
- If you start this early enough, you could give students time to fully read each selection or read each one aloud in class. Just plan for the bracket to end toward the end of March to still get in on the March Madness excitement because you’ll be getting into the top few selections by that point.
#3 | Clashing Characters
Some of your favorite characters will battle against each other in this argument-heavy March Madness activity.
How It Works:
- Students nominate characters from books they’ve read throughout the year. You can also expand to movies if you want the focus to be argument-building. If you want to focus on character analysis in text, then stick with the characters from books.
- Assign students to argue why their character should win based on qualities like bravery, intelligence, or influence on the story.
- The class votes on winners for each round until one character is crowned champion.
- As the characters progress through the bracket, encourage students to pick sides and maybe even throw a party on the last day when the top two characters go head-to-head.
#4 | Poetry Slam Bracket
Bring poetry to life with a friendly competition that includes students reading, analyzing, and presenting poetry.
How It Works:
- Select 8–16 poems for students to analyze and perform.
- Divide the class into teams, with each team responsible for presenting a poem.
- After each performance, the class votes on which poem had the strongest delivery or impact.
- Keep narrowing the field until there’s a winning poem!
The most significant part of this activity is that the students’ performances and presentations of the poems will develop as they progress in the bracket, leading to some really awesome final-four and championship-level performances!
Bracket-related activities to coincide with March Madness don’t have to all be huge, and they don’t have to be done all at the same time. The key is to tailor it to your student’s needs and your curriculum. These activities can complement your regular lessons without taking up too much instructional time.
You can also do bracket activities throughout the year and not necessarily connected to March. You could develop your whole year off of moving from one bracket to the next.
March Madness isn’t just for the sports fans—with these bracket-themed activities, your students will love bringing energy and excitement into their ELA learning.
