I sat on the sidelines throughout March as Dustin Williamson and an all-star team of teachers shared March Madness music activities and I thought to myself, lamely, “oh, I should do that next year”. Then April came and I found myself thinking, “oh, I wish it were March”. You know what… my level 3 classes are going to celebrate May Madness. If you have not yet tried this awesome year review of music, check out the brackets that my students made today. I included two wildcard spots for songs that were either voted out earlier or songs that did not make it into the original roster… students vote on the wildcards on the day of the big game. You can download a .docx and change the names of the songs or, if it is easier, download this .pdf and just white-out the names of the songs and put in your own. Personally I am rooting for Peret´s song El muerto vivo!
I thought the exact same thing as you….I have to do it next year! But then, like you, I said to myself, why wait? And we started “mayo música manía” (I like your locura title better). I had 24 songs, none of them related to songs that I used for instruction this year (except for La Gozadera). The kids absolutely LOVED IT and it became a battle between classes. They couldn’t wait to see if their song(s) made it to the next round the next day. It came down to Duele el Corazón versus El Mismo Sol, the artists that I predicted, but not the songs: El perdón versus Sofia. I love the idea of a wildcard spot or two, and will definitely use it next year. This was a great way to end the year!
Is this just pure fun where you just listen to the songs without TEACHING anything?
That is an interesting idea… but the way I do it is we made the bracket from songs that they had learned throughout the year. Here is a description of the process I go through to teach songs so that they actually understand them well: https://mrpeto.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/ligia-elena-steps-to-make-this-song-comprehensible/
March Music Madness was a definite overwhelming success in all of my classes. Can’t wait to do it again next year! In fact, next year I might do bracket with Spanish TV commercials.
I love, love, love this idea Dustin! Would you mind sharing the form you created to collect student votes? It had like 5 or so categories on which to rate the song, I think. I believe you shared it in earlier post but can;t find it for the life of me. Gracias!
I love the commercial idea! My students LOVE March Madness! I had former students poking their heads in my classroom to see what songs were moving forward. 🙂