March Madness: College Research Using the Brackets

UPDATED with 2022 Men's and Women's March Madness brackets. Issue with Google Form has also been resolved. March Madness is the perfect time to have students use the computer to research colleges! Have your Elementary School students research colleges of their choice using online tools and graphic organizers. You can do this activity any time of the year with any colleges.

This activity is a great way to incorporate research, organized 5-paragraph writing, and beginning to think about college readiness and preparation. Students will choose a college from basketball's March Madness bracket (list of 2014-2017 teams included) and complete college research into the important attributes of the school using College Board's website. I also encouraged my students to research two other in-state colleges, just so they can start to think about colleges to which they may someday apply. This activity works great for upper elementary students, or even middle school students in need of some extra practice in research, organization, or just motivation during the long month of March. Included in this product are:

-Directions for teachers and students including link to College Board search page

-Recording sheet to use while documenting important data

-Organizational planning sheet for writing 5-paragraph essay

-Suggested rubric for scoring student writing

-Previous years' brackets: 2016, 2017, 2018

I have updated the packet with some more items based on user suggestions:

-UPDATE: 2-college and 3-college Venn Diagrams for comparing

-UPDATE: College Term Definitions and College Majors with Related Jobs printable pages now included for student reference

-UPDATE: Link to a Google Form for students to input their data and for the class to use as a comparison and analysis tool