Not Another Icebreaker: Music & memory
My kids know everything they could ever want to know about each other walking into my Spanish 2 class. They’ve been playing human bingo and going on photo scavenger hunts with the exact same kids for 2 1/2 years.
Yet there is still ice to be broken, to make it feel GOOD to be back, and to remember what we were about in Spanish class.
My group last year (and every year) LOVED coros. That group especially loved (and I mean LOVED–Yotuel was known as “papasote“) Yotuel’s “Me gusta”:
So I took the lyrics from the song and split them up 24 ways (that was my largest class that year) and numbered them. Then I chopped them up to hand one out to each kid as they walked in.
I had the song playing as they walked in, and as soon as they heard “Por quéeeee,” there were kids singing along. When everyone was seated, I cued up the chorus (I think I’d do it with a lyrics video in the future), and let them just enjoy for a moment. Then I had them look at the numbers on their slips and instructed them to read in order.
It helped having the numbers 1-24 marked on the board, too, so I could quickly point to them without having to call them out. You could also have them line up in order of the lyrics too if you want them moving, or you could set up random seating by having corresponding numbers at each seat!
I liked how this particular song evoked positive memories for most of my kiddos, but there’s no reason Spanish I couldn’t start off this way with an easy enough chorus, maybe like “Nuquí” or one of the others on my 2017 list. It could be the theme for the year!
Now, my Spanish I class never got the chain read sounding quite like Yotuel, but we got good vibes going for the whole group–in the target language!–from the start.
