March Madness RESULTS

Our March Madness competition came to an end at approximately the same time that the NCAA tournament ended.  The winner at my school was I Funny by James Patterson.  In addition to voting for the favorite book, we had a bracket competition going.  The boys filled out brackets making predictions as to the winners of each round.  One boy competed his bracket perfectly.

While we had a lot of fun with this reading promotion, I'm not sure if I'll continue with it in the future.  I'm not so sure how many of the books the boys actually read.  There was a lot of lobbying going on for particular books, but it lacked any critical thinking and meaningful discussions relating to the books.  It seemed like completing the brackets, and then tracking the brackets seemed more engaging than reading the books.

The timing of this also coincides with the culmination of our two Black-Eyed Susan book clubs.  Typically as we reach the end of the book clubs, the boys reading becomes more directed, and slightly frantic since they want to be sure to read the books they might want to vote for.  This is in direct conflict with the March Madness competition.  Neither activity can be changed to another time of year since both are tied to external timelines.