I remember thinking last year, “How cool!” when my friend Cathy Jo Nelson shared her March Madness display. When she shared a picture of her bracket for this year, I knew I wanted to steal this idea!
You should follow Cathy’s directions on her blog, especially where she explains how to seed the books. I didn’t think that hard before I started stapling, but I will follow the seeding rules when I do this again next year.
I ran the Destiny report that showed the top 25 circulated titles for this school year. For books that were part of a series, I just went with the first book in the series so I could have more variety in the selection. I also made some cute filler spots that I’ll replace with the winning titles along the way. Unsure of how much space this would all take up, I laid my bracket out on the tables (then moved to the floor when I needed more room) to see how much space I would need before I stapled everything on the wall. Yay for self-healing walls in the hallway!
I’m planning to use Google Forms for the voting each week of March. I’ll post the links on Schoology so students can vote. Also during the first week, I’m going to have a place for students to make their predictions for the winner, and I’ll do some type of drawing/give away for a prize at the end of the month. 
I think this is going to be a lot of fun and a great way to get our students excited and talking about some awesome books!
Speaking of March Madness….
SIGLIB (formerly SIGMS) will be hosting our annual March Madness discussions on Facebook this year! Make sure you join our Facebook group and participate in our discussions throughout the month of March…we’ll have some great ISTE book giveaways along the way!
I love this idea and will begin building mine today!! This is perfect timing for me since I have yet decided a new theme for my March display. You said you ran your Destiny report for the top 25 books yet the display is only for 16 books. Will you please elaborate on this thought process? I am guessing you have class sets that may circulate that wouldn’t necessarily reflect the popularity of a title, or there are series titles that possibly take up the first several spots? Think I may go a step further and add QR codes to the covers that will lead to a book trailer when available… So fun! Thanks for the idea!
I could have done more, but 16 went with the “March Madness” feel, I thought. And some of the books were series, and I just wanted to take one from the series. I think QR codes with book trailers is an AWESOME idea! I’d love to see a photo of yours once it’s set up!
How do you keep students from voting more than once in a week?
I can’t if I use a Google Form. We use Schoology as our learning management system, so if I put up a poll on Schoology, they can only vote once when logged into their account.