Academic Brackets

One of the activities I brought home from December's TAGT conference was Ian Byrd's Academic Brackets.  The idea is to seed academic concepts, people, or other topics in a tournament-style bracket.  For each match-up, students select one of the contestants to make an argument for.  The process repeats until a champion is crowned.

For our first tournament, we seeded the eight nonfiction characters that we read about during the first semester.  The objective was to write persuasively using strategies such as ethos, pathos, and big names.  For the first round, students were only allowed to write one or two sentences to support their character.  When time was up, students read their responses, and voted to determine who would advance.  For the semi-finals, students wrote a paragraph, and for the finals, they wrote two paragraphs.

With each round, the students' writing improved.  Their products were increasingly passionate, the strategies were more evident, and the the arguments were more convincing.  By the finals, students were actively campaigning, and even voluntarily made props and digital presentations to enhance their speeches.  It was obvious that the competition became personal to many students, which resulted in great enthusiasm for their writing.

In the future, I am going to try a tournament for science and social studies.  It has the potential to make students go the extra mile, as they want to do their best so their candidate wins.  To view Ian Byrd's blog about academic tournaments, click here.  Who won the ASPIRE 5 Think It bracket?  Just follow the link below.  You might be very surprised!

Think It Bracket