March Mammal Madness

Through different science teacher groups in Facebook, I was introduced to March Mammal Madness. Last year was the first time that I participated with my Honors Biology class. In preparation I used painters tape on the wall outside my classroom to mark out the bracket. Then I put together a Google Slides document formatted the way I wanted it to be for students to fill in information about each of the competitors to put on the wall bracket. We split the animals evenly among all of the students and they worked on filling out the information for their assigned animals. Students also used the Slides presentation to make more informed decisions as they were filling out their own brackets. We allowed any student in the school who wanted to compete to fill out a bracket and follow along. As the competitions happened, I moved the winners forward on the brackets so everyone could see the progress. 

Student-made information sheets for two of the 2020 competitors.

Students finished filling out their brackets before the actual competitions began and were ready to go once the battles ensued. The day after each battle happened on twitter, we would watch the rodent recap done by Rodent Roudtable on YouTube in class. Even my high schoolers enjoyed the cheesy recaps of the competitions.  At the end, I gave the student with the highest score on their bracket a little trophy that I had bought off of Amazon.

Sample information sheets from 2019

This year, we went to online learning shortly after the competitions began. Students appreciated that even if everything else was cancelled, at least March Mammal Madness was still happening and we could still watch the recaps together as a class.

If you'd like to participate in MMM, Arizona State University's site here is the place to get started. Here is the link to the Google Slide that I put together for students to use to put the animal information in.