The 5 Focus Areas for my March Madness Poetry Tournament

Hosting a March Madness Poetry Tournament is one way I liven up what could otherwise be a blah month. The weather is still crummy and Spring Break seems far off.⁠

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But even more importantly, this intense focus on poetry builds my students' comfort levels with reading and understanding poetry while also providing an opportunity to review learning from earlier in the year.⁠

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As we progress through the tournament, here’s the terms and skills  I focus on. 

Tone

Students choose a tone from a list of provided possibilities and then select lines to support their choice. Examining tone is a great exercise in connotation. Is the tone sad or is it depressing? Is the tone joyful or exuberant? Discussing the shades of meanings of these words also helps students to build their vocabulary.

Language 

Students look for examples of descriptive language (imagery) as well as figurative language: idioms, similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, and allusions, and analyze the meaning of these.

For similes and metaphors, I give the students the sentence frame: "the poet compares ___ to ___ to show..." For personification, I give the students the sentence frame: "the poet gives ___ the human quality of ___ to show..." Similar sentence frames could be offered to analyze the other types of figurative language.

Sometimes poems don't include figurative language or even much descriptive language. We can then discuss why the poet might choose to use literal and more direct or sparse language.

Theme

Students choose from a list of “big ideas” I provide and then use those to develop a thematic statement. This is a process we've practiced earlier in the year, but theme is something students always need more practice with. 

Sometimes we all share out the top "big idea" and then draft thematic statements from there. Sometimes we jump right into crafting thematic statements. I'll share out a few and give feedback. Students will revise and then choose a best one from their tables.

Poems’ themes can also be compared for similarities and differences. I can split the room in two and have half of the students come up with a theme for one poem in the match up and have the other half of students come up with a theme for the other. Then we can compare the themes and discuss how two similar poems might have similar or very different themes.

Connections

Students consider the connections they can make to the poem: text to self, text to text, or text to world, and how those connections help them better understand the poem. Sometimes students are eager to share personal connections, but if not I try to open it up by sharing one of my own connections. If I can see a connection to a text we've read earlier in the year together, I'll prompt students by stating that I see a connection with said text, but let students do the thinking about what that connection might be.

Titles

Students reflect on the meaning of the poem’s title. Is it serious or humorous? It it a summary of the poem, connected to an important line, or revealing of the theme? I push students to go back in the poem to find lines to support their thinking. Many poems do use a line as their title, but if a poem doesn't, I also ask students which line from the poem they feel would be a good title.

Read on for everything you need to host a March Madness poetry tournament in your own classroom.