August 30, 2009
Filling in the Lyrics Sheet
The first couple of listens are essential. You need to let them hear the song a couple of times, but you need to do it without letting them sit there and silently communicate with each other. If they don’t have a task at hand, they’ll roll eyes, shake their heads, and before you know it, the whole class will have decided that the song is STOOOOOPID.
A simple activity will help to solve the problem.
Give students a lyrics sheet that has a few words missing. As they listen to the song, they fill in the blanks with what they hear. Typically, I hand out a double-sided sheet. The first side has 5-6 words missing. The second side has 10-15 words missing. I play the song twice, and they fill in the blanks. This way, they have listened to it two times before ever being asked to sing it out loud.
After this activity, we don’t do anything else with the song for the day. We let the music sink in a little, and tomorrow they might be ready for more.
NOTE #1: You might consider playing the song as they leave class, and again as they arrive the next day. The more exposure they can get without being asked to perform only improves the odds that they’ll sing later.
NOTE #2: I generally do not provide English translations on the lyrics sheet. If you do this, they will read the translation rather than focus on filling in the words.
- Page 1 – Introduction
- Page 2 – Lyrics Sheet
- Page 3 – The Performance
- Page 4 – Concrete Instructions
- Page 5 – TPRS
- Page 6 – Verbally Fill in the Blanks (and a game)
- Page 7 – Karaoke Videos
- Page 8 – Closing
Too much clicking? Combine everything onto one page
Gracias Sr. Wooly,
Your tips are great. We have been enjoying your songs in class and the students request it daily, but now you offer some great advice and I look forward to applying them. Especially the “crawling all over the desks” part. jejeje.
Keep up the incredible work.
Sr. Kent de la Chalupa
I fully agree with you about setting things to music that you want them to remember. My principal last year in one of his visits, took up some maracas and sang with us. He reminded me this fall that he still knew “fui, fuiste, fue.”
I found that some verbs can also be learned with the Mexican Hat Dance main refrain music. Verbs like “Estoy, estás, está…” fit to the rhythm — but only if one includes the vosotros form.
I do admit to the kids that they’ll hate me forever, but music works!
Thanks for the great ideas! My students LOVE “Guapo”. We draw Victor and talk about what he’s really like. We sing it and the boys take turns acting out Victor’s role and the girls are the “Victorettes”. This quarter I think I’ll have them bret out into groups and perform the song with props of course, as a presentational assessment. They will videotape it and then we’ll watch them all in class. Gracias Sr. W!
One of my classes found an explanation for “Sam” not having enough time to get to el baño before class…he was talking with friends at the supermarket while looking for a special pink apple that could “rap” “Feliz Cumpleaños” to give to Mr. Bill, his math teacher. He finally found the special apple at Disney World, where a vacationing classmate sold him the apple for $250. Mr. Bill estaba muy contento…pero Sam no tenía la oportunidad para ir al baño antes de la clase de español. Now that you know the background, you can see that “le traeré una manzana” is quite an offer from Sam! Thanks for the inspiration!
Hi! I just wanted to share something that has worked really well in my class. We did the invitation song and after listening and singing the original, I put them in pairs and then they changed the lyrics to other vocabulary words–like jugar al futbol, ver la tele, etc. Then they presented to the class–with fake phones, props, etc. It has been so fun!!!!