A Place to Ponder: February 2017

In the spirit of the annual March Madness basketball tournament, last year my colleague, Valerie Glueck and I designed a literacy related March Madness bracket of nonfiction picture books to foster a love of nonfiction in our reading community. This "Nonfiction Tournament" has not only created an energy and excitement for read aloud; it has also exposed students to more nonfiction, which can be a neglected genre. Teachers have used our March Madness bracket as a springboard for discussions of text features and structures, vocabulary and author's purpose. For more information, check out my posts from last March!

http://shellymoody.blogspot.com/2016/04/nonfiction-picture-book-march-madness_6.html

http://shellymoody.blogspot.com/2016/04/march-madness-nonfiction-celebrating.html

2016 March Madness Bracket

Valerie and I spent the last year collecting titles of outstanding nonfiction books published in 2016. We focused on topics and formats that we thought would be appealing to students in grade three through five. Another important criteria for our teachers was that the book could be read aloud in one session, which eliminated a few of our favorite books from 2016, such as Some Writer by Melissa Sweet.

We are excited to reveal our 2017 March Madness bracket to our school community on February 27! It was very difficult for me to select ten books from our collection of sixteen outstanding titles! I love all of the books in our bracket, but for now, here are my 2017 Top 10 March Madness Nonfiction Picture Book Contenders (in no particular order)!