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Music, Maestro! Student song of the week

Published by SraSpanglish on

I don’t feel like keeping up with coros or listening practice this year, but I do want to keep the weekly infusion of energy from learning a new song. What’s more, I want to tap into the message from the recent AATSPSC keynote and give kids a little more control, a little more ownership and leadership practice by having THEM present the song THEY liked instead of just running through my favorites for the year.

But where to begin?

Well when I don’t know where to start, I start with Twitter, so I put the question to #langchat on Twitter. Of course I got some EXCELLENT suggestions:

school appropriate images/themes/words?
at least some part comprehensible or relatable to what they’re doing?
emphasis on them explaining *why* they chose it? or why it interests them?

— Bethany Thompson (@BThompsonEdu) January 2, 2018

 

I had my 3s take over my Coros this year. Pick song, get approval, make sheet, create vocab activity, etc. Graded on a rubric for prep/presentation/etc. Scary but going well with ideas for next yrs improvement!

— Senorita Prendergast (@SrtaPrendergast) January 3, 2018

One of my SC amigas who was at the same conference had a helpful caveat too:

I like what everyone has mentioned, but I would work in some “buffer” time—they have to submit it to you to check out before it is presented to class. Make sure it’s all kosher before it is unleashed on your other students.

— Erin Carlson (@Erinrae0399) January 2, 2018

So I took my PLN suggestions and narrowed down exactly what I wanted for every song to

  1. Chorus lyrics – presenters recite line by line and class repeats
  2. Relevant images – either from the video or to capture the message (or both)
  3. Main idea explanation – with supporting details, IN Spanish (since mine are level 2)
  4. Vocabulary – 5 words in Spanish and English: something unfamiliar but useful
  5. Choral reading – a la CI Liftoff, wherein they have a leader, but recite in English
  6. Activity time – for later in the week to review and demonstrate understanding, in the style of last year’s Instagram challenges

Then I made a Google Slides template (free on TPT!) and an example with “El mismo sol,” a song they heard Spanish 2 perform last year at our school festival:

We even did a practice Snap Story on Seesaw!

I made a Google Form from my 2017 and 2018 playlists to give students options, then had them listen to four songs (two from each playlist) that they liked. I did include an “other” slot as well, though Spanglish songs from Coco were a no-go, and my kids who went to Peru with me came back with a Bad Bunny obsession that could get me fired (I did let one kid do a throwback to “Tortura” though–talk about oldies!) Each student then ranked their top three.

I then went through the resulting spreadsheet and started color coding kids to match them up. I wanted to make sure everyone got at least one of their top 3, but that I had no more than 2 people doing the same song. Interesting note: with all of the weather delays and early dismissals, one class had to do their picking mostly on their own, and I got a lot more diversity in the requests from that group…whatever that means. They’re a slightly smaller class, so I guess it’s not too strange that they ended up with more singletons. Still, I’m not sure what this means for future surveys…

So I shared the groups with everyone (I did let a couple of singletons join forces, and I basically voluntold the one kid who didn’t do his form he was doing my new favorite Friday song “Libre”) and shared a Google Doc with all of our Monday dates on Classroom for them to edit and choose when they would present, pointing out they’d have to turn in their presentations the Thursday before to iron out any issues.

Then, maybe because I’m a glutton for punishment, maybe because I insist on eliminating excuses, I went through the completed signup list and made a separate assignment on Classroom for every. single. song. I assigned it each only to the one or two kids presenting, made it due the Thursday before they said they’d present. Honestly it only took me about 15-20 minutes tops for each class because it was mostly copy and paste, so it wasn’t overly grueling.

Of course we don’t have class this Monday, but I’m looking forward to what the first presenters come up with for “Internacionales” and “Corazón”!


SraSpanglish

Laura Sexton is a passion-driven, project-based language educator in Gastonia, North Carolina. She loves sharing Ideas for integrating Project-Based Learning in the world language classroom, including example projects, lessons, assessment tips, driving questions, and reflection.