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I should also mention that where I live #ballislife.
In a very tiny area we have raging IU, UofL, and UK fans (and a small handful of dorky Purdue fans*). Although our UK fans don't typically light couches on fire... you have to go to Lexington to see that shit.
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March Madness is a huge freaking deal around here. People eat, breathe, and shit basketball in springtime. As soon as the brackets were released, they were EVERYWHERE in my school building. You couldn't turn a corner or glance at a room full of students without seeing one. I had students who were incessantly researching teams, googling stats, and fanatically following game scores.
If they put half as much effort into their academics, the whole bunch of them would graduate with honors. I found myself thinking about this often, long after the devastation that was UK losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four. (Did you know that there are people around here who get championship tattoos before their team has even left the gate?)
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So as of two weeks ago, I was feeling really burnt out and I knew that if I was feeling it, the kids were definitely feeling it. We needed a change of pace in a bad way. We had just finished looking at some released test essay prompts and the released student writing from years past, and a girl in class casually remarked how she really wanted to do well on the essay because she's really competitive.
Competitive. Competition. Teams competing for fame... glory... doughnuts...
Jackpot.
As soon as my classes cleared out for the day, I began tackling this idea that was just starting up in my brain.
I need teams. I need rules. I need enthusiasm. How can I get their enthusiasm? We need just enough energy to get through this last long haul. Prizes are good, but that's not enough. I need... March Madness.
I called my competition ECA MADNESS, since that's the test my kids take. I decided that since I teach four sections of general English 10, that we would be broken up into four regions, with four teams from each region, starting us at the "Sweet 16" point in the bracket system. Students would have to choose their team members and fill out an entry form, including their team name and their mascot. I'd use andom.org to determine the "seeds" and how they were placed on the bracket. But answering test prep questions wasn't going to be quite enough. I needed something else.
So I brought in a Wii.
The kids lost their minds (in a totally awesome way) when I introduced the competition to them. They were in it to win it. That competitive spirit permeated the atmosphere of the room as they started coming up with ridiculous team names and mascots. By the end of the day, nearly the entire sophomore class with buzzing with excitement over this. They were discussing t-shirt designs and test-taking strategies, Wii bowling tricks and context clues, bracketology and essay outlines. We started with in-class competition, narrowing it down to our Elite 8, then our Final 4, where only one team remained from each class period.
Here's how I chose to do game play:
1. Each team had to answer a question. The Sweet 16 questions were fairly simple, and as the tournament has progressed, I have upped the level of difficulty. The questions went up on my Smart Board and they had sixty seconds to answer the Sweet 16 questions (vocab and context clue related) and 90 seconds to answer the Elite 8 and Final 4 questions (reading comprehension).
2. If the team answered the question correctly, they got 10 points. They also got the chance to play Wii bowling. They were allowed to bowl one frame and they got additional points for the number of pins they knocked down (1 point per pin. I didn't have any kind of a bonus for bowling a strike.)
3. If the team answered incorrectly, they did not earn points and they did not get to bowl.
4. They had sixty seconds to answer the simple questions, and ninety seconds for the more complex reading comprehension questions.
5. The team with the highest score moved on in the bracket.
The competition got intense. Suddenly kids who never gave a whistle before about being able to answer a multiple choice question were absorbing any tips I had to offer. The results of this one-week competition have been spectacular! When a question would go up on the board the room would get silent as the kids leaned in, staring at the question. The competing team would mutter under their breaths to each other, analyzing the question, eliminating answers, until they were able to come up with a solution together. The teamwork was impressive, and I was thrilled to see them using these skills that I just knew were going in one ear and out the other a week prior. These kids were able to work through very difficult questions - questions that would have seemed impossible to them a week ago.
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I decided that this whole system worked too well to not share with you. I'm confident I am not the first teacher to come up with this idea, but I did a lot of leg work with this and now I want to share it with you! I've made it more generalized, so it's titled Test Prep Madness instead. Whether you are prepping your students for a standardized state test, PARCC tests, or just want to spice up your final exam study routine, I hope you will find this as inspiring and fun as we did.
The PDFs are ready to print. I've also included Word Document versions that can be edited with your preferences. The bracket starts at the Sweet 16 level, but you could always alter this and start at the Elite 8 or whatever works for your classes. I've also included the rules that I gave to my students as a Word document. Feel free to edit as you see fit and print away! I only ask that you keep my copyright at the bottom of the pages :)
Test Prep Madness Bracket - PDF
Test Prep Madness Bracket - Word Doc
Test Prep Madness Entry Form - PDF
Test Prep Madness Entry Form - Word Doc
Test Prep Madness Sample Rules - Word Doc
I would love to hear some of your test prep success stories! How do you help your students prepare for unit tests, finals, or even the Big Dance tests?
*I should mention that I'm married to a dorky Purdue fan and half of my family are dorky Purdue fans. I love dorky Purdue fans. This is good-natured teasing... except during basketball season. Then it gets hella vicious.