march madness | Expect the Miraculous

For several weeks, people around the world have been contributing to our 30-second book talk Flipgrid. In March, we narrowed the videos to 16 and have been inviting a global audience to listen to the videos and vote on the brackets each week.

After many, many votes, we have a winner! Congratulations to Evin for her book talk of It Came in the Mail by Ben Clanton. Adaline’s book talk of I Dissent by Debbie Levy was a very close 2nd place. Both of these students will receive a special recognition on our morning broadcast as well as gift certificates to our local bookshop, Avid Bookshop. Please help me in congratulating our winners, but more importantly, continue to share great books with one another!

Back in January, we were inspired by Jennifer LaGarde and Brad Gustafson’s 30-second book talk challenge. Our 5th graders all worked on scripts and recorded 30-second book talks on Flipgrid. Thanks to Flipgrid’s new Global Connections feature, our grid was shared with other users of Flipgrid. I also shared it widely on social media. Over time, students from around the globe started adding their voices to our grid. Thanks to views, likes, and judge’s choice, we now have a top 16 out of over 90 videos on the grid.

Using Google Drawing, I made a bracket for us to use over the month of March. Round 1 is now open. Students were placed into groups of four to compete against one another to move onto the next round.

I also embedded the drawing onto a Google Site with a form for voting.

This is my first attempt at a March Madness style reading incentive. It is truly amazing to look at all 90+ videos and see how passionate and creative the kids were in their talk. The real winners in all of this are the students who made the videos and every viewer who takes time to listen to their voices. The March Madness event is just a little icing on top to celebrate our hard work.

We invite you to join in round 1. Voting is open through the end of the night on March 17th. Then, round 2 will be announced. Please feel free to vote more than once and share with your own networks.

https://sites.google.com/clarke.k12.ga.us/epicbooktalk/