Sweet Sixteen Poetry Style #SOL21

  

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I live in Indiana, and spring means basketball and state tournament time for us.

I have seen teachers do March Madness brackets with books, but I have never been able to wrap my brain around that large of a project. This year I have seen a few mentions of April Poetry brackets and thought I just might be able to handle the reading of poems in a Sweet Sixteen bracket. 

I put some feelers out on Twitter and had a few teachers reach out and share their resources. 

I could do this! 

I began looking in my files and books for poems I have yet to share with students and searched online for others. Yesterday, I narrowed my list down to sixteen and created my bracket.

I will share two poems a day. Students will read, analyze, and evaluate which poems should move on in the tournament until we have a winner. I am hoping to have some "heated" arguments on why certain poems are better than others and deserve students' votes.

But more importantly, I hope to introduce some amazing poems to my students. Reading poetry is always one of those things I want to do more of, and this is another chance to do just that. 

And hopefully, this will entice a few of them to write a poem of their own!