March Madness
As we head into February I wanted to share what I’ve done for a digital March Madness with books before. My middle school library has this rough rock for all our walls and so I can’t put up posters or displays. When I see all the awesome physical March Madness brackets I love them so much and wish I could do something like it. In 2019 I decided to do a virtual March Madness and show the results on our library’s Apple TV on a loop—the second best option.
This first one I did was the theme of most popular books checked out from our library at the time. I went through different genres so there was a representation in each area. Then I sent out a Google form through our LMS platform to every student on campus, one form a week in March (excluding Spring Break) and by the end of the month we had a winner! I used Google Drawings to create the bracket (if you click on the image it should take you to the document so you can make a copy and edit how you like).
In March 2020 I was glad I had started these virtually because we were already were in lockdown for COVID so we just continued voting via Google Form. The theme for 2020 was ProjectLIT, which I was heavily supporting at this moment in time through our ProjectLIT club, books and displays. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was the winner this year, and I was THRILLED!
I had joined The Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List at the end of 2020 into 2021 so I wanted to highlight graphic novels that year for our bracket. Using the Google Form, updated each week, students ended up choosing Smile by Raina Telgemeier!
2022 was an anomaly and I was unable to get our March Madness off the ground, but I came back strong in 2023! I decided to do genres last year to see (what I already knew) which genre was the most popular. Use this Google Form if you want to try genres instead of specific books.
This year I plan on doing books turned into movies or TV shows as our March Madness theme. There’s been so much talk about new shows this year, I’m curious to see which is the favorite of our students. Here is the Google Form I plan on using. Stay tuned to my social media to see which one wins!
