With my students as the selection and voting committees, I had all of the components to run the tournament. At the end of February I asked my students to select their three to five favorite books of all time. I told them that their votes were going to help make the "teams" for our book bracket. #BookBracket2015 had begun! After counting up all the votes, I was met with quite the list of books. Definitely an avalanche of 258 different titles! Fortunately there were 32 top books, so a bracket of 32 was created. Books were seeded based on the number of votes and four regions were established. The stylish bulletin board in the back of my classroom was going to receive a new look, slowly but surely. I say slowly but surely because I only revealed two games (four books involved) per day with my students. I would also post the match ups on my Instagram and Twitter accounts. Each book had a # before it (i.e. #AmericanSniper) and #BookBracket2015 was used in every post. For the month of March, every day that I was in the classroom began with #BookBracket2015. I would recap the previous day's games with a clever pun and reveal the day's match ups. Students would vote via secret ballot for the book that they wanted to win per match up. I collected and counted each vote. By the Elite Eight, I was beginning to get tired of counting the copious scraps of paper, so I opted for hand raising and having students stand on the side of the room for the book they wanted to vote for. I received several complaints from the diehard #BookBracket2015 fanatics. They complained that the integrity of voting was being lost as people were voting based on how their friends were voting. In the Final Four and Championship, we went back to secret ballot voting and a champion was declared: Green Eggs and Ham! Upon reflection, #BookBracket2015 was a success! It allowed me the opportunity to talk about books in my classroom, gave me an avalanche of books to navigate through over the summer, and let me share my passion of reading and sports with my students. My students enjoyed participating in #BookBracket2015 and many have provided me with great feedback for next year. I am looking forward to #BookBracket2016 and who the eventual champion will be!
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Welcome to "The Avalanche ... of Books" blog! In this first post I hope to answer the usual "first blog post" questions, including who I am, why I am blogging, and why I am calling my blog "The Avalanche ... of Books."
To begin, I am a 2014 graduate of Michigan State University. I completed three degrees in English, history education, and social sciences education. These three degrees led to a lot of required reading. I am three weeks away from completing my teaching internship from MSU's College of Education. I have been teaching several sections of English Language Arts 9 for the past school year at Clarkston Junior High. I have also had the opportunity to observe and learn from other educators in the building. Overall, it has been a great experience and I have learned a ton about myself and teaching! As an English teacher and lifelong learner, I love to read, and I feel like I am in a constant avalanche of books. My bookshelves are teeming with titles ranging from fiction to history to historical fiction to classics to texts focused on teaching and so much more! I am a huge proponent of reflection. During my internship, I constantly asked my students to reflect on the units we accomplished and asked questions centered around what did they did/did not enjoy, what was easy, what was difficult, which type of reading/annotations/assessment did they prefer. I greatly appreciated their details, notes, and feedback. It helped me improve as a teacher both in the moment and for future units and classes. I hope to continue this type of reflection as I move into my first classroom. This blog will be my reflection on the books that I read, along with the classroom implications that they may have. Some posts will be reflections of what I'm doing in the classroom related to books and reading. Other posts will be about books that I read and how I hope to bring them into my classroom. The possibilities and titles are endless (trust me!). |
The Avalanche of Books
As an educator and avid reader, I am constantly hearing about books. I feel like I am being chased by a giant, rolling avalanche of titles and authors. Rating System
5 books - New fave! Read it now!
4 books - Shelf worthy 3 books - Quality read, but ... 2 books - Borrow it 1 book - Skip it Archives
December 2017
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