At the end of our Fractions and Decimal Equivalence unit, we played a new math review game inspired by the March Madness tournament.  I created this game so that all teams had an opportunity to work at their own pace and review the content.  The rounds were fast, and there were at least 2 teachers in the room to make sure everyone was on task.  I had my 3 highest students that knew the content solidly to grade the work from the teams, so that the teachers could focus on monitoring the student teams and peer coaching.  These high students were also responsible for adding points to the score board each time a team correctly answered problems.

We did not have any issues of student engagement during this game, as all teams really felt they had a chance to win the game.  As papers came in, they were quickly graded, and the team points were constantly going up.  All of the teams had mixed ability levels so that there was equity.  In addition, each player had to write, so this necessitated the peer coaching.  While points were tallied up, players had a chance to make shots in the room on the mini basketball net.

The final part of the game was our elimination rounds.  These rounds were quicker than the qualifying rounds.  In the end, only one team won.  In both sessions that we played this game UCONN won, and 2 or 3 weeks later, it was such a joy to see that the men and women’s teams at UCONN won the real March Madness!

Finally, a few weeks after we played this math review game, we organized a March Madness basketball tournament the Friday before our high stakes state testing started to let the students relax and get rid of stress and anxiety.  There was no content whatsoever in this game – just teams of 3 and their b-ball moves!

Below are some of the slides from our March Madness Math Review game.