Songs About Coronavirus

Many musicians are trying to promote safety during the pandemic by singing songs. Check out some of the songs about staying home below.

Los Rojos from México

Hermanos Yaipen from Peru

Judy Neddermann from Spain

Gaby Moreno from Guatemala

Create a new blog post in your Spanish Blog Portfolio (or send an email to your teacher), title it the same as this blog post, then complete two of the tasks below.

1. Which song do you like the most? Explain your answer.
2. Which song do you like the least? Explain your answer.
3. List in Spanish and English 3 phrases from a song.
4. Pick a song and describe the song and video. How would you describe the song? What other songs does it sound like? What instruments do you see/hear?
5. Find another song (in any language) about staying safe during the pandemic. Share a link to the video and say where the artist is from.

No Te Calles

Throughout the history of music there are many protest songs. Here is a recently released song in Spanish.

Create a new blog post in your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and complete 2 of the following tasks

• This song is about standing up and fighting for something you believe in. If you were to go out to the streets to protest something, what would it be and why? Explain 
• You can follow up by going to this website related to the song and share your reason to be out in the streets and not be silenced.
• Look up the lyrics and identify 5 keywords to translate from Spanish to English.
• Create a brief biography of Ruben Blades in your own words. 
• What other protest songs do you know about? Create a list of at least 3 and what they are fighting for.

Cancion para viernes 10/27

Each Friday we'll listen to and watch a music video of a Spanish speaking country.

This is another video with a cute story.

Fonesca is from Colombia

Create a new blog post on your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and answer at least 2 of the following questions.

• Describe the video in your own words. What happens in the video?
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the artist. 
• Find the lyrics in Spanish and summarize them in English.

Canciones para viernes 10/6

Each Friday we'll listen to and watch a music video of a Spanish speaking country.

Today I have two videos from an amazing Colombian group ChocQuibTown 

Create a new blog post on your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and answer at least 2 of the following questions for one of the songs

• Describe the scenery in the videos in your own words. What happens in the video?
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Which song/video did you like more? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the group. 
• Find the lyrics in Spanish and summarize them in English.

Songs About Immigration 2017

Many musicians write songs about the effects of immigration, I posted some here a few years ago, but it's time to share some more recent songs. 

Create a new blog post on your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and select one of the songs to answer at least 2 of the following questions. 

This song is about a man leaving his family for the United States.

• Describe the video in your own words. What happens in the video?
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the group. 
• Find the lyrics in Spanish, translate and summarize them in English.

This song is about the 11 million immigrants that come to the United States.

• Describe the scenery in the video in your own words. What do you see in the video? What instruments do you see?
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the group. 
• Find the lyrics in Spanish, translate and summarize them in English.

Here is an older song from Kinto Sol, La Bestia, which talks about how many immigrants from Central America travel through Mexico on trains known as La Bestia, or the beast. These trains are known to be very dangerous to navigate. 

This song is about the children of undocumented workers (many of the children are born in the United States).

• Describe the video in your own words. What happens in the video?
• Find the lyrics in Spanish, translate and summarize them in English.
• Explain the social, political or economic effects of immigration based on 2 or 3 statistics that are stated in the video.
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the artists. 

Canción para viernes 9/15!

Each Friday we'll listen to and watch a music video of a Spanish speaking country.

Here is the first video

These artist are from Colombia!

Create a new blog post on your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and answer at least 2 of the following questions.

• Describe the video in your own words. What happens in the video?
• Did you like the song? Explain your answer.
• Did you like the video? Explain your answer.
• Write a brief biography in English about the two artist. 

Canciones para los novios

Es el mes de febrero, y escuchamos música en la clase de español.

Here are some romantic songs with great music videos are catchy lyrics to celebrate el amor and impress tu novi@!

The best music video!

Also a great music video!

A super catchy song from a boy band!

"Por fin te encontre" means "I finally found you"

Nice lyrics to repeat to someone you really.

Another great video!

Create a new blog post on your Spanish Blog Portfolio, title it the same as this blog post, and answer at least 2 of the following questions.

• Which song do you like more? Include the video & explain your answer.
• Which music video do you like more? Include the video & explain your answer.
• Pick two of the videos that have a story (not just lyrics or video of people performing) and explain what happens in the video.
• How do you celebrate Valentine's Day? Which romantic song in English is your favorite?

Música de Juarez, México

National Public Radio recently covered a rapper from Juarez, Mexico, and his new song.  Watch the video and click here to listen to the radio piece.

Hot Tamale Activities

Create a new blog post in your Spanish Blog Portfolio. Embed the video and answer the following questions.

• What's the name of the song? What is the song about?
• Provide three details about the artist. 
• In the song there is a woman who lost her sons to violence in Juarez, Mexico, talking to the then President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon. In your opinion, what do you think a President of a country is responsible for doing to decrease violence in their country?
• What is your opinion of the song?
• As you watch the video, what do you notice? What does the song or video make your wonder?

Google Translate will MESS YOU UP

When we use Google Translate in class, we use it to look up specific words (and usually cross reference it with another Spanish-English dictionary/translation site like WordReference.com) or to hear how specific phrases we already know are correct are pronounced. If you try to use it to write an entire dialogue you will probably end up with a recording of you sounding pretty silly in Spanish.

avoid this!

Or you will sound like this!

Hot Tamale Activities - Complete one or more of these activities as a advanced/Hot Tamale blog post. Title your post the title of this blog post.

• Watch other videos on Google Translate Sings playlist and include your favorite 2 in a blog post. For each song, select 1 lines that when re-translated were the funniest and type it with indented quotes.
• Create your own Google Translate Sings song by taking a song you like and using Google to translate it to other languages then back to English. Compare the original lyrics with the new lyrics and describe the differences in a blog post.

Ms. Bordner Update

Hola estudiantes!

Students are updating their Spanish blogs letting me know what they've been up to since we were last together so I thought it might be a good idea to let you know what I've been doing!

This August break I went on a bike trip in Spain! I spent about two weeks traveling around Spain. I spent six days biking 200 miles in Spain and it was awesome! I also got to go to Morocco in Africa for a day.

I also spent the April break in Costa Rica with students from the class of 2015 (now seniors!), and I spent December break in Colombia (the country in Latin America). Though I've traveled a lot to the Spanish speaking countries my next international trip will be to somewhere in Asia! Either Thailand, Japan, or China. I want to go there because I'm really interested in exploring their traditions, ancient ruins, and their large cities. I plan on spending some time in a big City like Bangkok or Tokyo, visiting ruins like the Great Wall of China or Angkor Watt, and of course going to a beach!

Something I'm really excited about this trimester is our focus on Hispanic music. I love to listen to lots of different genres of music in Spanish (and English) and when I learn about the instruments and the historical/cultural context of the songs it makes me like the music even more! One of my favorite genres is female Hispanic hip hop artists. One of my favorite artist is Ana Tijoux from Chile. I also really like Los Rakas, another hip hop group from California and Panama.

I'm also looking forward to talking about different foods from Spanish speaking countries! I love Spanish food like ham with melon and octopus! I love the fresh juice in Costa Rica and pancakes with plantains! I loved drinking the juice straight out of the coconut in the street in Colombia! And I love love love chilaquiles with mole sauce in Mexico!

To end this letter I just want to say that I'm really excited to see all my students again, pick up where we left off, and keep learning about the world around us and how to communicate with others in it! Lets have a great year!

World Cup 2014

Olé! It's the World Cup! The World Cup is an international soccer competition that happens every four years like the Olympics. Countries all over the world compete to play in the World Cup, and only 32 earn the chance to compete for the globe. 

Mr. Rucker and I have been leading a World Cup club for the class of 2017. We have a fancy website you can check out all kinds of things about the world cup like the music, the mascot and more!

www.tinyurl.com/chworldcup2014 

Check out the website then compose an email answering one or more of the Hot Tamale Activities to bordner@cityhigh.org or akhand@cityhigh.org

• Who are you rooting for? Why?
• Watch a few videos on the website then describe them.
• Check out some of the infographics on the World Cup 2014 page and describe them.
• Watch a game then describe it. 
• Pick a country competing in the World Cup and write a description of their culture or soccer team

Listening Practice with Music Videos

This song has been stuck in my head for days. David Bisbal is a famous pop singer from Spain, so he has a different accent when he sings compared to Latin American singers.

I love listening to music in  Spanish and it helps me speak Spanish better. A fun website to get practice listening to songs is LyricsTraining.com. You watch the video and fill in the missing words. There are different levels to practice, so as you get better with each song you can challenge yourself to fill in more and more lyrics!

• Click here to play "Diez Mil Maneras" on LyricsTraining.com - take a screen shot when the game is over and email it to bordner@cityhigh.org or akhand@cityhigh.org.

Spring song of 2014

I spend a lot of time learning about different types of Latin American music, and this is a great pop song with a very fun video! Watch the video above (the lyrics are translated to English on the bottom of the screen) then email bordner@cityhigh.org or akhand@cityhigh.org your responses to the prompts below.

• Complete the missing lyrics on this clozeline wrkst.
• Create your own list of things you want to do before you die.
• This video was shoot in Venezuela. What do you notice about the people and scenery in the video? 
• Share your favorite feel-good song of the Spring/Summer.

Songs about immigration

You all know I am a Spanish nerd, but I am also a music nerd too. Before I taught full time (and back when print media was still a thing,)  I wrote for music magazines in St. Louis and Illinois.

Every week I listen to two podcasts created by NPR, All Songs Considered and Alt Latino.

Over April break Alt Latino had an episode about songs about immigration. You can listen to the 24 min. episode here, (you can also scroll down and just listen to a song or two).

Listen then answer the Hot Tamale Activities below (email your response to bordner@cityhigh.org)

• Pick a song and describe it in detail. What is the story? Where is the artist from? What instruments do you hear? You can also fill our this document.
• Summarize one or more of the songs/stories. Why did the immigrant select that song?
• Is there a song or person you could relate to? Did one of the songs/people remind you of someone you know? Who? Why?
• Which of the stories of immigration did you find most powerful? Why? (For me, it was the musician in the band who cannot travel with his band because he does not have documentation.)
• If you had to pick a song to tell your story, what song would you select? Why?
• How has listening to the songs/stories changed how/what you think about immigration? 

There are also more songs and videos about immigration here. You can watch and summarize the the videos, find the lyrics on the internet. The 2nd and 3rd songs are hip hop songs about immigration.