This slide deck guides students through the first two weeks of the March Madness Poetry & Debate Unit, combining creative expression with academic argument writing. Week 1 slides introduce the essential question, March Madness bracket activity, and a close reading of Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball, leading into the drafting of personal sports-themed poems. Week 2 transitions into opinion writing, with slides that scaffold thesis development, evidence gathering, and strategies for integrating research into strong written arguments. The deck includes visual supports, sentence frames, and structured tasks to support student engagement, collaboration, and independent revision.