Señora Chase

Locura de marzo

Please tell me (if you’re a Spanish Teacher!) you’re doing Locura de marzo with your little darlings! Huge shout out to Señor Ashby for organizing such awesomeness!!

If you haven’t heard about it yet, IT’S THE BEST THING EVER. Or at least the best thing to get you though March, brighten up the gloomy days and give your little darlings something new to look forward to. And I love exposing them to new music styles and introducing them to new artists…I REALLY LOVE it that the work is already done for me! There’s like ZERO PREP. Hallelujah!! 

Basically it’s a March Madness style tournament, but instead of college basketball teams it’s songs in Spanish. Each day two songs “face off”, students listen, decide on their favorite and then vote. Just like in March Madness, the winning song continues in the tournament and the losing song is eliminated. And what’s even cooler…Locura de marzo has gotten really big… students all over the US and world listen in and vote.

All the details you need are on Señor Ashby’s website. You’ll find the bracket, the match up for each day, music videos and/or song lyric videos and there’s even a Shared Google Drive for teachers to create materials and collaborate. SO RAD!

Today in class we talked about March Madness (the basketball one!) and the Spanish Song one and I explained how it works…in slow, comprehensible Spanish, of course! Then we previewed all the songs while students rated them on this sweet star sheet created by Tiffany Pistole.  In subsequent classes, they will use their star sheet to fill out their brackets and then, to make it a class completion (and to make it REALLY easy for me to keep track of), I printed out these sheets, and after completing their brackets, students recorded their prediction for the winning song.  They’ll keep their bracket in their binders to reference as the tournament continues and I printed a map on the back of their brackets. As we talk about the different artists, they’ll  write in the artists’ names on the map, representing where they’re from. As songs are eliminated from the tournament, I’ll toss the prediction papers until we are left with one paper, to award our winners!

As the tournament progresses we’ll watch the videos, talk about the artists, do a handful of Movie Talks and definitely incorporate some dancing, because my little darlings love to dance!

I recorded this with my Spanish 1s, if you’d like to see what it looks like. You’ll watch me use my Magic Cards to call on students for listening grades. You’ll also see me call on 2 girls in a row who were not paying attention and could not tell me what we were talking about. SERIOUSLY, CHICAS?! So, I channeled my inner Jon Cowart  and we did a short little “Expectations Time Out”, then got back to business! (and whoops! Evidently the word is not tornamento but torneo in Spanish…I’ll do better next year!)

Then we listened to a bit of each song, talked about if they liked it or didn’t (and they signaled back to me their opinion) and I gave instructions on how to fill in the bracket, all in, you guess it, slow, comprehensible Spanish!  Then they recorded their predicted winning song on the board:

Sorry…I know this post might have been more useful to you like a week ago…but I’m not much of a planner! ¡Les ruego perdon!

As the tournament progresses, we’ll watch two videos each day in class, and discuss their opinions about them. I’ve got these Opinion Posters hanging in my classroom to make it easy for my Little Darlings to holler how how much they love (or hate!) a particular song.

Are you doing Locura de marzo? What fun locura activities do you have planned?

21 comments

  1. I totally agree! I’m doing Locura de Marzo in sunny Las Vegas and am doing it with 4 different classes. Each one gets to vote and will have a class winner. We have a large printed bracket that gets placed in the hallway so that everyone can see it. They have the boxes with stars to rate each song and have to write a sentence to describe if they like it or not and why. When we’re done, they’ll turn all 16 in for a grade.

    We vote on each pair of songs and do an activity-today they had to stand up (and sit back down) each time they heard culpa in échame la culpa and any version of mirar en Será fácil. For some of the videos, they’ll have to write summaries or comparisons. They’ll have to justify/explain why their song should win as we get further in competition.

    If anyone would like an additional resource, I went through the songs and found some more of the actual videos that were school appropriate and some additional readings for some of them with the backstory. You’re welcome to use, if it’s helpful to you.

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UJrcZih-o7rVmmuR0tNIQqD5-DDsYf0F4yqdFjZlvXw/edit?usp=sharing

    Thanks for sharing ideas in blog, Sra. Chase!

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    • Thank you! Thank you! This looks great and I love your idea of having them stand up when they hear X. I’ll do that today with my freshmen!!

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  2. Thank you for sharing your ideas!  I love the idea of having students write their names on one sheet for their predictions. You mentioned a map you printed on the other side of the bracket….what countries did you include?  South America?    Could you share this if possible?  Mil Gracias!!!! Anna 

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  8. Thanks for sharing! I always do March madness with all of my students but haven’t had them do their own bracket. Why not? I have no idea! What a dunce! This is so great and I’m excited to have them fill out their brackets this week. Thanks, Senora Chase!

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  10. Mil Gracias…this was so helpful!!!!! I will pass this along to my other colleagues that they can do this too. I’m excited to try this. I am on a block schedule though, 7 day rotation actually. I see most classes every other day, so I’ll have to figure out the voting of the two songs each day.

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  12. ¡Hola!
    First of all THANK YOU for all you do for the WL teacher community, you are truly awesome!
    I was wondering if you would be willing to share your most updated presentation for “Locura de marzo 2024”. I saw you have an amazing introduction to the process for students in Edpuzzle, so I figured out it does not hurt to ask.
    Gracias 🙂

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