For the past five years, WES has celebrated our love for reading during the month of March with a school-wide March Madness tournament. All classrooms will read 16 nonfiction picture books on a wide variety of topics including inventors, space, animals, athletes, and historic events. Each week students will vote for their favorite books to move to the Elite 8, the Final 4 and eventually our book championship on April 8th!
This year we added a display of our March Madness Hall of Fame champions to celebrate our past winners! It helps our third graders have a better understanding of the tournament, as well as some of our favorite informational books from the past four years.
On Friday, February 28, we kicked off our annual event with a school-wide assembly to announce the titles in this year’s bracket! Shelly Moody, Valerie Glueck, Jason Pellerin (High School JMG teacher), and Dylan Veilleux collaborated to make this year’s kick-off an energizing event! Our annual event began with a highly competitive staff vs students knock out game. Cheers erupted in the gym as our participants battled it out! In the final matchup, Ryan Sucy knocked out fifth-grader, Zakary Perry, to win this year’s March Madness knock out championship!
We also had a parade of books with a student representative from each classroom. Our Master of Ceremonies, Jason Pellerin energized the crowd as each book in this year’s tournament was announced!
written by Shelly Moody