Who isn’t a fan of Selena Quintanilla?! Well, my students, for starters. I was amazed (and appalled) that most of my Little Darlings had no idea who she was. (You mean Selena Gomez, maestra?!) Since I’m committed to teaching with comprehensible input and since when you’re making language comprehensible, you can teach about anything, we jumped into the world of Selena and are having a blast. Don’t teach novices? Stay tuned, we’re focusing on Selena in Spanish 4 as well and I’ll compile resources for my bigger Little Darlings soon.

Vamos a cantar: No debes jugar and Bidi Bidi Bom Bom

Of course we have to sing, and I am blessed that this year’s Little Darlings LOVE to sing! I was having a really hard time deciding which Selena song to introduce them to, so I decided to share two of my favorites and have them vote for the one they wanted to learn. Welp, giving them two choices meant they wanted to sing both and who am I to tell them no?!

Lyrics: No debes jugar and BidiBidi Bom Bom

There’s no right or wrong way, but here’s how I teach a new song. For us, the secret is to stretch it out over multiple class periods, the more they hear it, the more they love it (disclaimer: almost always):

• I want them to hear the song a bunch of times because I ask them to sing it…so I’ll play the song as they’re coming into class a few days before I formally introduce it, and when they’re playing GimKit or working independently. Did you know you can loop a YouTube video so it plays continually? I learned this great tech trick from La Maestra Loca and I use it every single day in class! Just pick your YouTube video, right click and select “Loop”…now you’re all set!

• After they’ve heard it a few times without realizing that they’re going to learn it, I like to do a focused listening activity with it, before I give them the lyrics. We change it up but here are a few of my favorites for this stage:
  • Give them a few words that are repeated multiple times to jot down and tally each time they hear the word.
  • Play the Lyrics Video and ask them to write down the words they recognize in the song, then looking at their list, make a prediction of what the song is about…OR I’ll give them two choices (in Spanish) and ask them which one they think is right, looking at their list for evidence. La canción se trata de un chico. ¿Está Selena enamorada del chico o está irritada con el chico? ¿Por qué?
  • Give them a Word Cloud of the lyrics and ask them to circle the words when they hear them in the song. We’ll also take a look at the word cloud and predict what the song is about, by looking at the words. (Berta Delgadillo and La Maestra Loca introduced me to the awesomeness of Word Clouds and I am forever grateful!)

• Then I give them the lyrics as a CLOZE activity. They listen to the song and fill in the missing words. I usually play the song twice: the first time they just listen and try to fill in the blanks, the second time I show a lyrics video so they can read the complete lyrics on the screen while they’re filling in the spaces on their lyrics sheet. Afterwards, we “correct” it together, and I write the answers on the board while we spell them in Spanish. This is how I teach the letters, we do not sing the alphabet, rather all year long we practice with every song, saying the letters. It sounds like this: ¿Qué es espacio número uno? Sí, es amor. Ayúdenme, clase (as I write it on the board and the Little Darlings say the letters with me) A – M – O – R.
• For each song, I pick a few “palabras importantes”, words or phrases that that we’ll assign motions for and we’ll do the motions while we sing.
• Now it’s time to sing! We start with the chorus, and we sing it a few times, over and over. It it’s fast, we’ll slow down the speed of the YouTube video until we get it down (then we’ll try to sing it sped up because it’s hilarious to sing like Alvin and the Chipmunks). What about kids who refuse to sing?! I don’t worry about it much. I tell students I need to see they’re following along, so they can sing their little hearts out or they can follow along with their finger on the lyrics sheet.

EdPuzzle: Selena

Last year when we had to do low-fun class, I fell in love with EdPuzzles…a little upfront work for me, then glorious silence while they’re getting lots of listening and reading input. We’re back to having fun again this year (Thank you, Jesus!) but as a little treat for me, I’ll toss in an EdPuzzle every now and then. The video itself is not comprehensible for novice learners…but the EdPuzzle has LOTS of comprehensible reading as they learn about Selena’s life and legacy.

Selena Spanish 1 EdPuzzle

Quizlet Live

After they’ve completed the EdPuzzle, they’ll know all the info to play Quizlet Live which is a sneaky way to give them lots of reading.

Google Doodle Movie Talk + Write and Discuss

Selena’s Google Doodle is perfect for a Movie Talk followed by Write and Discuss. Then this video Latinos react to the Google Doodle by Pero Like does a nice job of showing why Selena is so beloved, even now, 25 years after her death.

Goodness, Selena takes me back to middle school me, listening to Dreaming of you and high school me, watching the Selena on VHS in my Spanish class with Señorita Holman. So many Selena memories and such a delight to share La Reina de Tex Mex with my Little Darlings.

Hope there’s something here that you can use to make your life a little easier! Hope you’re enjoying the weekend…we’re home watching the snow fall and I love it!