Sparking Student Motivation with a little March Madness: Pregame!

Right now, basketball is king in my neck of the woods.  I mean, how can you not be full of ALMOST March Madness when you live in the Orange Nation.

My Smarties LOVE basketball.  I think it is one of the only things that actually gets us through the LoNg, lOng LoNG, Cold winter.  I used a little of that love of basketball spark a little student motivation, so I'm linking up with one of my BBBs, Joanne, at Head Over Heels for Teaching for her weekly linky party.

I set up a little tournament play in my classroom.  

I created a series of Math Tournament Rounds to challenge my students and review a few math skills before our assessment.  Lucky for me my good friend Diane at Fifth in the Middle had already created a Basketball Madness packet that helped save me some time.

This packet goes through a series of Rounds leading up to the finals.  It reviews Order of Operations, Place Value, Multiplication, Division, Fractions.. a ton of basic skills.  On each page problems are given a point value so I can assign my students different point values to complete per page.  Thank you Diane for creating a simple way for me to differentiate!

Basically I gave each of my students a tag and started them at Round 1.  As they completed the sheet I gave them a prize (Smarties for Round 1) and had them move their tag to the next round.  My teammate and I set a 40 minute time limit.  This was broken into two 20 minute periods because we had a half day of school  It was a perfect amount of time.

Of course I have several high achievers, who made it to Round Three.  

Friends, they LOVE this!  They love basketball, they love competition, they love prizes, and they love math! YAY!

This Basketball Madness practice is part of a set called Tricky Math that is on sale at Educents until 2/27.  It is a great deal.  $10.99 for 10 products that help you with Multiplication, Decimals and Fractions.  You can check it out {HERE}.  If you happen to be a first time buyer to EDUCENTS, you can use my {REFERRAL LINK} and get 20% off.  It's a pretty great deal!