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March Music Madness!

Well, a whole lot of life just happened.  I am just now catching my breath.  And when I came back and looked over the topics I thought I was going to be blogging about around now, I lost interest.  ;)  So instead I'll blog about what I *am* interested in right now!  March Music Madness!

A lot of what I do in my job involves current events and seasonal themes.  Reality orientation is important for my most cognitively challenged students, and current events are most engaging for my teenagers with mental health issues.  So what's going on  in March?  NCAA's March Madness!  Brackets and basketballs are flying, and everyone catches the fever.  My school is no different.

So this year, I decided we'd have a tournament of our own.  I've mentioned before I use music videos as part of my routine in my music groups.  So, first, I selected our Sweet 16 music videos--some are old favorites, and some are new to us.



Currently, we are still in Round One of our match-ups.  We watch two videos in class, then vote.  (For my non-verbal students, I have them individually choose between two screenshots.)  In addition, I've opened up the voting to the staff, and send out emails through Google Forms to show the two videos side by side and collect their vote.  The music video with the most votes moves on to the next round!

The staff has also filled out brackets (just search printable brackets to create a custom one) and turned them in to me.  Whoever has the best bracket will win a small prize...and they are being hilariously competitive about it.  😂  It has ballooned from just a fun activity to start class into a building-wide morale booster, and I love that.  There are some really fun videos, so check out the playlist!  Maybe you can have a March Music Madness at your facility. :)

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