Música Madness - Elementary Style

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to implement a Música Madness tournament in my class. With the help of people like Carrie Toth and @Spanishplans, I’ve been able to craft a tournament that works for my students and me. A bracket of 32 or even 16 songs seemed a bit overwhelming for my first go around with 5th graders, so I settled on 8 favorites. At the end of the year, I do a Lip Sync Off, so I chose songs that students would see again in our next competition. I figure the more contact the students have with the music, the more likely they are to connect with it.
 
I set up my brackets attempting to put like music together to even the playing field. I also tried for different genres of music to engage the widest audience. Once the brackets were set; we completed one bracket a week for the first round, listening to the whole song. As we move forward in the brackets, we’ll listen to just a few minutes to remind students before they vote. I’m so curious as to whether the totals will change the more they listen to the song.  

Before listening and rating the songs, students marked a world map with the origins of the singers/groups. It’s always good to add in a little geography whenever possible! One of our artists, Nelly Furtado, is from Canada, and the kids were incensed! I explained that even though she wasn’t born in a Spanish-speaking country, she sings in Spanish and so she is included. Just like them, she learned a language other than her native language.
 
Each artist and song were rated on: tempo, melody, instruments and rhythm. These are words students are already familiar with from music class, so making the transition to the Target Language was easy. Students rated each artist/song individually after watching and listening to the entire song. I used Google Forms for the voting, as it tabulates the results for me and I don’t have to do any of the math. J

As an added bonus, I found a dance video for one of our favorites: Andas en mi cabeza by Chino y Nacho. I had the kids break up into groups to learn the dance that went with the video. As you can imagine, not all of them were super excited by the prospect, but once I assured them they wouldn’t have to dance alone, they were a little less reticent. It was AWESOME! Despite their protests, they had a great time and had a chance to interact with the music in yet another way. 

The best part of any tournament is the anticipation of who will win. Up until the last minute of our semifinal, it seemed like Juanes was going to win…but no! What a thrill! Students are still talking about this upset a week later. 

Even better, this gave me the opportunity to have students listen to a collaboration between Nelly Furtado and Juanes, as the votes were so close. This was one more way in which I could extend and enrich the process.
 
Is this related to the curriculum? Nope. Does it engage the students and give them an opportunity to engage with culture on their level? Yup.
 
After each round, students are excited about the music they are listening to and they engage in conversation around it. Students are open to hearing new things and are interested in something outside their norm. For me, this is a total win!

I can’t wait to see who our champion is!