ES S20 INT/ADV Music

Language Resident Name: Katherine Pérez Gutiérrez

Class theme/topic discussed: Music taste and music genres

Goal of the class

Class’ structure

Warm-up: Introductory questions about music taste and word cloud on music instruments.
Input: Small presentation on Cueca. It includes instruments usually used to play that music, exponents and dance (how is it and how the costumes look like).
Activity 1: Students choose between different Spanish speaking countries music styles. They have to make a small a presentation and include the same information as in the presentation the teacher gave (cumbia, ranchera, flamenco, rumba, timba, tango, salsa, merengue)
Activity 2: Students describe a picture in which writing and music is related and discuss whether music should also be considered poetry. Students receive fragments of different reggaeton songs and poems and have to distinguish which are which. They listen to all of them, read as if they were poems and share their results
Activity 3: Each group of students works with one of the fragments which corresponded to reggaeton songs and have to invent a new fragment. We listen to the songs and I pause them right before their fragment comes, so that they sing it.
Extra Activity 1: Discussing the content of some reggaeton songs and their cultural significance: Yo perreo sola – Bad Bunny
Extra activity 2: I play different songs linked with the styles they talked about in their presentations. Students have to guess the music genre.

Resources used

Reflection: What worked/did not work? How can it be improved?

Students enjoyed the discussions at the very beginning, but doing the zoom presentation was a bit hard. When talking about online classes, it’s better to avoid those “group research projects” because some students may just be on their phones or have a harder time doing group research.
As an extra activity we created a playlist in Spotify and I’ve heard students commenting on the songs, which is fun and engaging for them.

Annex