The first step is to generate a list of books on which the students will vote. I like to have student input, but you could also use circulation records or AR test results to get the titles of books your students have read. I really don't know the best way to get this information as I've used Google Forms as well as having students write down 3-5 book titles on a slip of paper. Don't forget your read aloud and literature circle books!
Google Forms will tally the results and then I list the top 16 books in order. Sometimes I might fudge the results a little to prevent both Sisters and Smile being in the group.
There are two different ways I make the brackets, depending on what kinds of books make the top 16. Sometimes I bracket them by genre (which is good if you don't want your final four to all be graphic novels), or sometimes I'll just do a straightforward seeding.
I copy and paste the book covers into a PowerPoint and resize them to four to a page.
After the first year of cutting and assembling the actual bracket, I decided that I never wanted to do that again! Unfortunately, I had to do a new one the following year anyway. To make this one last, I did some math that ended up being more complicated than I anticipated.
- Yellow background - Bulletin board paper cut into two pieces so that they will fit though the laminator (measure your school laminator in advance). Mine are 2 feet by 5 feet.
- Black strips - all are 1" wide
- 2" (16 for the far left and right)
- 7" (22 for the rest of the horizontal and some vertical)
- 12" (8 for the rest of the vertical; the longest vertical ones will be composed of 2 pieces - one on the upper half and one on the lower half)
- Black place holders - 4" x 5 1/2" (make 31)
- The font is {Collegiate} at font size 600pt.
After placing the pieces and attaching them to the bulletin board paper, I run both halves separately through the laminator. After hanging them up, I put the placeholder for the winner in the middle.
After the 16 are posted, I wait a while so that students have a chance to read some of the ones they haven't read. I created another Google Form for the first round of matchups and shared it through Google Classroom. If they haven't read either of the books in the matchup, they didn't have to vote in that pairing. On my hallway display, I put a sticky note with the number of votes received on each book. This way, they could see the "final score" of each matchup. Repeat until you have a winner!
Here are the past few winners. I am retiring Wonder this year since it's usually a slam dunk win (pun intended).
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