music
November 14, 2019
Who would have thought Sra. Musicuentos would have taken a hiatus from music? I blame it on early novice teenagers. A few years ago, I transitioned from teaching intermediate learners into teaching total beginners who were mostly in the tween/teen years. In my experience, that’s not the best environment for using music to really teach (for […]
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March 8, 2019
Love is amazing, but man, it can hurt. At least, that’s what pop music says! Indeed, the metaphors involving love and sickness, pain, and medicine abound in pop music. That means a health unit rivals any other theme in the contest for most applicable music options! My high school students are currently wrapping up such […]
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September 20, 2018
How do you introduce a novel? So many teacher-authors, teacher-creators, teacher-bloggers have great ideas out there for previewing a comprehensible novel with amazing activities. Just search the title of your novel and the words “introduce” or “preview.” One of those teachers is my buena amiga Maris Hawkins. I’ll be indebted to her this whole semester for […]
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September 1, 2017
Can you give me a hand up on this soapbox for a minute? I’ll be here just a moment, and then we’ll move on, I promise. It’s all well and good to march for women’s rights and hold signs about men telling me what to do, but when it’s a sexy Latin man with a crazy […]
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February 25, 2017
It’s almost March and Mania musical de marzo is in full swing. And have I got a find for you. Refresh my music memory. It’s hard to tell who started it or if three people had the same idea over a period of a few years – maybe Jeff Klampka on Ben Slavic’s blog, then Spanish […]
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December 28, 2016
Merry day-after-Christmas! We’re almost to the end! The second most popular post of 2016 was also about music – this time, the top 20 songs that have stood the test of time in my class (some more time than others). My students love them! Will yours? Top 20 Songs for Spanish Class I just posted […]
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December 8, 2016
It’s December and time to look back at the best of 2016 on the Musicuentos blog! If you missed some posts, never fear – here we begin the top five of what posts people found worthy to read this year. The fifth most popular post of 2016 was published as part of #Authres August and […]
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August 22, 2016
I just posted about some great newish songs I’ve found, but the majority of songs I use in my classroom are tried-and-true successes from the last 12 years of teaching. The fact is, most new music that comes out, however engaging it might be, is not comprehensible and does not repeat enough to be useful […]
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August 15, 2016
#AuthResAugust: New(ish) Music!
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My first summer out of grad school, I went to an AP Spanish Language workshop that was generally uninspiring except in one respect: the leader was the first person who connected pop music and pedagogy for me. Now, I wouldn’t be Musicuentos without the música, so let’s go with a music version of #AuthResAugust! Las recientes que […]
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March 28, 2015
Ever feel behind the times? I just caught the current #1 song on Latin Billboard and it struck me as having two golden ingredients for a good class song: high student appeal and a couple of high frequency structures repeated. (Though I wanted to say, Dude – she moved on, she’s happy, get over it! […]
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January 7, 2014
If you’ve read me long, you’ve heard it before – no matter how good the textbook is, at least in my experience, it’s never motivated students past September, and it’s out of date as soon as it’s printed. Of course there are lots of other arguments – artificial order, ridiculously expensive supplements, faulty companion assessments, […]
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November 9, 2013
Listen to some Grammy music
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The Latin Grammy awards are coming up in two short weeks, and this year the website has made it easier than ever for you to catch some Grammy-nominated tunes. Check out the Latin Grammy Playlist Hub, powered by spotify, to listen to Latin Grammy-nominated music by category. Lately, whenever I’m at my computer working […]
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