By DANIELLE RUSH
RUSSIAVILLE — March Madness has taken over at Western Primary School.
Students there have dressed in team colors for all 64 teams, from Villanova to Siena, and are anxiously awaiting the outcome of Monday’s championship game to see who wins school bragging rights.
Along the way, they’ve learned geography, spelling and writing skills, math and reading skills, all as part of an NCAA tournament unit lead by reading specialist Kalyn Smith.
Smith said he participated in a similar program while he was student teaching and brought it with him when he began work at Western Primary this school year.
He made a large copy of the 64-team bracket after it was announced, and hung it on the wall in a central hallway. Each teacher was assigned two teams for her class to study.
“A lot of the teachers have gone way beyond what I asked them to do,” Smith said.
He said the students have looked up where the school is and how far away it is from Western schools, then made a chart of the 10 closest and 10 farthest away.
They’ve researched and found out how many students are enrolled at their schools, and made graphs documenting top 10 smallest and largest.
Smith hung a large United States map in the hallway for students to mark their school’s location.
They’ve also sent cards, pictures and letters to the basketball teams and received boxes of souvenirs from several of the schools. Ohio State sent rally towels and balloons overnight to a kindergarten class, and Robert Morris sent lanyards for each child. Portland State sent pennants.
Smith said it was fun to watch how excited the kids were when boxes arrived. When the kindergartners received their souvenirs from Ohio State, “it was like Christmas when she opened the box. The kids just screamed because they were so excited. ... It’s just been so much fun seeing the things the kids get and the interaction with the teams.”
They’ve had fun, too. The class supporting Final Four team Villanova had “Blue Tuesday,” and hung up a big Villanova poster in the classroom. Students in the class supporting Michigan State painted their faces green and white.
Smith said in addition to academic skills, teachers have used the tournament as an opportunity to teach character, including sportsmanship, and opinion versus fact.
“The teachers have really gone out of their ways to bring other parts of the curriculum into this.”
They’ve also learned about colleges, and have the idea in their head about going to college some day, Smith said.
“It exposes the children to colleges they may never have heard of before, like Seina and Morgan State. They get exposure to 64 colleges.”
Danielle Rush may be reached at (765) 454-8585 or via e-mail at danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com
