March Madness in the ASL Classroom

For most teachers, March is the LONGEST month ever. There are no holidays or days off. We work straight through to the end of the month hoping to get to Spring Break sooner rather than later. Imagine if you are feeling this way as a teacher, think about how your students must feel. Maybe as bored as you.

I want to share a few ideas connected to March Madness that aren’t basketball-related at all, but they do involve brackets, good discussions, and using the target language.

What do I do?

First, you will need to start by creating a bracket. You can do this digitally, on the whiteboard or on a poster board in your classroom. Remember however you create it, it will need to be up and ready to use for the duration of the activity. I always start with the “Sweet 16” as I think 24 is just an overwhelming number and who has time for that, right?

Once your bracket is created, you will need to fill it in with the topic you want to discuss. I have given several ideas below but you can put anything that you are working on in the bracket. Whatever you put in should spark conversation. Think of things that will interest your students so they will want to talk about them.

I also like to use cultural topics for these brackets to introduce and discuss various cultural themes in the Deaf community. Some of my favorite are De’VIA art and music videos, signed by deaf people of course.

I like to put an image in the bracket along with some words. For example, if I am working on deaf art, I place an image of the artwork along with the title of the piece. It just makes it more eye appealing.

Once your bracket is completed, start the competition. Set the rules for communication, discussion, and debate up before the activity starts. Each day that you are using the bracket, remind students of the rules.

This is not really an activity to be done all in one day. Try giving 1 – 2 voting opportunities each day. You can use this as a warm up or bell ringer or something to do at the end of class before students leave. If you do one competition a day, it should take about 21 days to complete.

Idea #1 – Music Videos

In basketball, we use the “Sweet 16” to narrow down the top teams. In ASL, we can use the best music videos in ASL to discuss what we like and don’t like. Students can provide opinions, debate the topic, and vote to see who is moving on to the next round. Provide students with talking points so they know what you are expecting them to discuss. Think of categories like translation, use of space, and expressive language. You can make the categories whatever you are wanting students to improve upon themselves.

Idea # 2 – Art

There are a ton of great pieces of art that depict the Deaf community. The artwork can be a connection to the language, a display of oppression, or the use of hearing privilege. Whatever pieces of art you choose, you are bound to get a great discussion out of which piece of art should move on to the next bracket. If you have time introduce the work by talking about each piece and telling some history about the artist if you know the information. This is a great idea to connect to your De’VIA unit or teach vocabulary while having a discussion. Get your premade art bracket here.

Idea #3 – Student Work

You can use the brackets to make student work part of the discussion. If your students create artwork or music videos, you can easily place those in the brackets and have students discuss and vote. They are super engaged for this!

Idea #4 – Articles

You can choose short articles or excerpts from books and have students read, compare, and discuss. The article that the student connects most with will move on until you have one champion. In this version, you can cover a lot of history, culture, or current events. You can also cover reading if it is in your school’s requirements. Try to make the articles interesting and quick reads so students don’t become bored. This activity should be fun.

Idea #5 – Famous Deaf

Use this bracket in conjunction with students’ presentations on famous Deaf people. Students can choose which person they found most interesting and move them through the brackets to become the champion. Anytime we can introduce Deaf people in the class is a win for all.

Idea #6 – Black History Month

March Madness follows Black History Month. So why not use students’ research of Black-Deaf Americans to use in the brackets? Maybe students created an infographic or poster of their famous Black-Deaf American. Use those as part of a bracket. This is a great way for students to learn about the people in the community and a way to showcase students’ work. You can even create polls and allow the whole school to vote.

What do you think?

Isn’t this a fun activity to incorporate into the month of March? But really, why limit this to just March. You can have a different discussion every month until the end of the school year. Just find topics and activities your students love, place them in a bracket and let them start talking.

Bracket bundle

Sports bracket

Art bracket

Music Bracket

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