This is one of the most popular songs from the Puerto Rican group “Calle 13.” It won “2011 Song of the Year” at the Latin Grammys and includes vocalists from Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. This is a beautiful video for students to see real people and real life across Latin America.
The song is a tribute to Latinos and exudes pride and love for the hardworking people and their countries. It touches on some social and political issues but shows the viewer… our lives aren’t perfect, but this is who we are and you can’t buy all that we have. It starts in a radio station in Cuzco, Pero and the radio introduces the group in Quechua.
This video is just too good to not show in class! Here’s a few idea on what students could do in the language to challenge their Spanish skills while soaking up the culture.
1.) Write down the words they recognize.
2.) Describe the people they see.
3.) Describe what the chorus is about.
4.) Describe the houses/nature.
5.) Make lists of the weather mentioned.
6.) Write a verse about their own country and what is beautiful to them that cannot be bought.
7.) Read the comments below the video on YouTube. What do other people think about the video?
Have you seen this video? How else could it be used in class to build our students’ language skills?
Nice! Thanks girl!
I also like to use songs in my French class for listening exercises as well as being able to reinforce little grammar things we have been working on. For example, I have been teaching a childhood unit to my Level 3 students so we have been using the imparfait and I used a song that I found on a French teacher’s blog called “On Savait (devenir grand)” and the artist is La Grande Sophie. There is a video on YouTube that we watched as well. This was a great song to use because not only was it about being young but I had the students fill in blanks for the words they heard in French and they were all in the imparfait. They had a really good time with it, especially since we had used a lot of the words and expressions in class and it was a very tender song about being young. Why make up my own activity when there is something authentic out there you can use. Once again the wonders of the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!