Mrs. DiOrio’s 3rd grade class, along with Mr. Lesak (Physical Education), completed a March Madness Thematic Unit with the students throughout the month.
While Mr. Lesak had been teaching them the sport, rules, court, positions and teamwork in Phys. Ed. in class we had been reading, writing, completing math activities, researching and more! The integrated lessons truly help the students make connections across curricula.
The students all chose an NCAA Division 1 college team to research and root for! They found out about the players, mascots, records, and logos as well as the colleges, their cities, states, enrollment, and location on a map!
With this information, they’ve answered questions, made graphs, created charts and most of all had fun learning. The students filled in a map of the United States, locating the top teams in the tournament. They read articles about the history of basketball, who invented the sport, famous players and interesting news.
Students completed math worksheets that involved multiplication, division, word problems and measurement! The conversation within the classroom has been fantastic and we’ve received some fabulous feedback from parents as well! Students went home discussing the teams, they acquired new knowledge of the game and became so much more aware of the sport.
As a culminating activity, we had a March Madness Party and the students participated in our very own March Madness basketball tournament! It seems they truly enjoyed the unit. It was a nice way to break up the month of NY State Test Prep and celebrate the end of the month for two reasons… March Madness and the administering of the state exam.
Special thanks to Mrs. Borgese and Mrs. Rosenman for always supporting what we do in our classrooms! We had fun with the unit and more importantly, we were learning!
