Download New Song Of Bracket REPACK
Dannette Blockmon
When I first started the March Madness- style song bracket for MIOSM, I had the principal play snippets of each song on the morning announcements each day. In 2021 when we had a good portion of our students on zoom and we weren't doing morning announcements in the building, I switched to using slides to have students listen to the tracks and vote in their homerooms whenever the homeroom teacher wanted to do it each day, and it was so much better! Homeroom teachers could share their class' vote right in the slide instead of remembering to email me, and they could incorporate the listening into their day at the time that made the most sense for them.
Anyway, looks like the first round is open through 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, June 13. Vote here, check out the entire bracket here (or below) and take a listen to the accompanying Spotify playlist. Go Whiskeytown!
Hey there! Ive been working on a Music Madness Bracket Generator, and it was inspired by Fantano's videos. With this tool you can generate your own Madness Brackets based on any artist thats on Spotify and you can figure out whats your favorite song :)
Here is the general concept, I'll put together a bracket of 16 songs,(Vivir Mi Vida, El Mismo Sol, etc.) you and your students listen to two songs at a time based on a schedule of one "battle" per day that I will post. Your students then vote in an online poll as to which song they like the best. Classrooms across the country can participate! I think it would be a blast! For added fun, I'd love to have teachers volunteer to have their students make a news report for each match in Spanish... maybe a fake interview with the musical artist about how he/she feels about the victory, loss, etc.
You all know I have been posting about using authentic music in Spanish class for years. It goes way back to my original ideas of música miércoles & baile viernes in 2014, as well as the very popular yearly March music bracket mania musical.
While on maternity leave in the fall of 2016, I created a popular resource, 1 Song from each Spanish-speaking country. It has 22 songs, one for each of the school days from September 15 to October 15. My original idea was to play one song each day of HHM. That would give the chance to specifically focus on each country. But, the next year with I used HHM version 2, I decided to use it as a Hispanic Heritage Month music bracket.
When I posted about my HHM fall Spanish class music bracket on social media, the idea took off. Many teachers started using my 1 song from each Spanish-speaking country slide as a bracket in their classrooms. Since then, I have created a new version each school year including version #3, 2019 version #4 & the 2020 version #5, HHM6 version for 2021, HHM7 for 2022 & The NEWEST 2023 Hispanic Heritage Month Music Resource!
My English teacher BFF next door picks one song each day to play loudly in her room during our four-minute passing time. She writes the song and artist on the board and plays it as soon as the bell to end of class rings. As soon as the bell to start class rings (or the song ends), the song is turned off and no instructional time is used. Her students are VERY into it and come to check the song before they even have class. This would work great for Hispanic Heritage Month, playing HHM8 version for 2023 each day. I bet the tradition will continue after October 15 as well ?
By request, in addition to playing a song each day, some teachers wanted to do more to introduce each country of the day. I created slides have the country, capital, nationality, two maps, flag, and a video for all 22 Spanish-speaking places. You could combine it with your song of the day slideshow to really dig deeper into each place for Hispanic Heritage Month. *Update you can get the newest 2023 country slides in my shop or on TPT. Learn more about using these travel slides in this blog post.
If you want to chat about these songs in Spanish, check out the new blog post Talk About Music in Spanish Class. Use these New Music Question Cards to chat about music and to discuss songs you listen to. They would work well in later rounds of your bracket when you want to mix it up.
If you have more time to dedicate to Hispanic Heritage Month, you could go even deeper. In addition to playing your song of each day and travel video each day of HHM could be dedicated to a different country. You could bring in guest speakers, food, research, dance, and use other elements of culture.
One idea is to split up the countries or artists/groups of each song and have students do some research on the song, artist, country, etc. These could be shared around the room gallery walk style, or even in the hall or somewhere in the school, to help celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month school-wide.
The idea of an HHM bracket credit goes to the awesome Sarah Whisenhunt. When she got version 2, she told me she had a head-to-head playoff/bracket in mind for version 2 songs vs. version 1 songs. So the OG HHM Music bracket idea actually included 44 songs, 2 songs from each country.
Since I was gone during HHM in 2016 on maternity leave in 2017 I decided to do a Hispanic Heritage music bracket. But for the sake of time only used 1 song per country. The lack of symmetry got the best of me with 22 songs competing. No, it is not an even match for every song. Yes, my board looked like Packman. No, I did not allow enough space for this board and everything was crunched.
Above is my bracket for 2018 (& my later versions look basically the same!) I got new country posters from Miss Maestra Cassie, whom she generously shared for all future HHM brackets. The country labels are on the instructions page of each slideshow.
During the fall of 2020 I added a new digital Google Slides bracket to each slideshow. This way teachers could use the bracket for virtual learning. Or you can just project the bracket instead of having to make a bulletin board. This is a great option for traveling teachers without a classroom.
Many teachers have different variations of what they do each round of a music bracket. For example, I know a teacher whose round 1 only plays the audio, in round 2 play the video, and then in later rounds does other activities with the song like these New Music Question Cards. See this blog post for song activity ideas.
Personally, I always start round 1 with the introduction of the song and the music videos. There is so much culture to be found in a music video. Especially when the goal is learning more about diverse countries and people, I find the videos to be important. The first round always takes me longer, so make sure you allow for about 10 minutes of class the 1st 2 weeks or 10 matchups.
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