A Little Bit of March Madness to Practice Some Sports

I am not a huge basketball fan.  I have filled out a bracket for March Madness less than a half dozen times in my life.  However, this is an event that connects to my students so this week I brought a tiny bit of the "locura" into my room.

Many names of sports are pretty decent cognates so to save a little time and get us into using the words quickly, I passed out notes with the English already written, not something I usually like to do but figured since so many words were similar to start with, it would be ok.

(I finally figured out how to add one of these graphic organizers and successfully add items to it!)

I put a bracket (made in powerpoint when I discovered my online bracket had been blocked by the school's firewall, sigh) up on the Smartboard and using phrases such as "¿Cuál deporte es mejor?  ¿número uno?  ¿el favorito?" I had the students vote on pairs and determined a winner for each pairing.

For the first round, the students repeated the sports several times after me before raising their hands to vote.  For the following rounds we only said the words once or twice per round.  Fútbol americano proved to be the favorite in each class.

Completed bracket up close

I loved that this activity had the students engaged in their opinions right away!  And while not everyone voted, they at least all had a chance.  Plus it was an easy way to practice pronunciation that was not the traditional "repeat after me with flashcards."