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Coro Roulette Process: Novice High/Intermediate Bellringer

Published by SraSpanglish on

My students will be singing songs from our coro starters for years to come (some proved today they still have “1977” stuck in their head from over a year ago!) The activity has proven to be hands-down THE most popular part of Spanish class, but it needed a little reworking to build proficiency beyond the Novice Mid level.

Selection
I have decided to mix up how I group the ruleta for each week. Last week I picked 3 songs from Mexican artists, making sure I got un cantante, una cantante, and un grupo. This week, I picked 3 groups (one all-female, one all male, and one mixed) from three different countries. Next week it’s all Spain, the week after–guy singers from around the world, and so on and so forth with different countries, female singers, and probably another group week and an international collaborations week (Enrique, anybody?).

Of course the foremost rule is catchiness, and beyond that, enough familiar vocabulary. Otherwise it breaks down like this:

  • one country: boy, girl, group
  • three countries: boy, girl, OR group

Setup
I make three a handout for students and SMARTboard slides for each week. The first slide has the 3 lyrics, 3 titles, and 3 artists’ names:
I substituted country clipart for screenshots from the video for artists this week, but I’m still trying to think of other ways to fit both.
The second just involves changing out the artists’ pictures/names each week:
I’ve included some ideas for sentence starters for the Describe, Responde, and Decide portions of the conversation to get them warmed up, at least the first few times around, and then I keep tally of the votes at the top.
Finally, I have an instruction page for the line-by-line interpretation/presentation. 
So far we’ve only used AdobeVoice–which is free and AMAZING–to make mini videos, but in the future, I hope to do some app smashing, perhaps with Toondoo and Chatterpix or maybe a VoiceThread with videos of their different steps (I KNOW! Videos in VOICETHREAD! Who knew?) and lines sung in comments.
For the student handout, I leave blanks for artist, title, and country. There’s also some space for making notes on unfamiliar vocabulary, room to write a descriptor (list of good/neutral/bad adjectives provided) for each element of the song (rhythm, melody, lyrics, topic, feeling, instruments).  
There are also boxes for Day 2 to write down opinions and Day 3 to write down a summary. 
Then I just swap out the chorus lyrics each week–though I have toyed with the idea of putting screenshots of the videos at the top, too.
Procedure Day-by-Day

Day 1: Describe

  • Listen to each chorus, placing the title and the artist with the right lyrics 
  • Highlight ALL familiar vocabulary in each, make notes on remaining words needed to interpret 
  • Describe each by element of each chorus (using descriptors provided on the worksheet): 

Day 2: Discuss

  • Describe your favorite to your partner giving at least one reason. 
  • Respond to your partner’s choice (with agreement/disagreement plus a different reason) 
  • Decide on which chorus your group will vote for and write down 2 reasons 
  • Each group voices their vote and must give a unique reason for their vote to be counted. 
  • Listen to the winning coro together and repeat with class 

Day 3: Present

  • Listen to the winning coro together and repeat with class 
  • Summarize the overall meaning 
  • Create a recording that includes a visual demonstration of the meaning (video, storyboard, dance steps)
    Categories: intermediatenovicestarterstechnology
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    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.

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