March Music Madness in Year 6
Music, culture and competition in Year 6 Spanish
Year 6 Spanish students are participating in the March Madness global music competition for the first time and as part of only two schools joining from Thailand. Music has the power to really bring people together – precisely one of the main goals of this competition. Organised annually since 2017 by a Spanish language teacher in the USA, this competition connects teachers and students from all over the world who share a passion for Latin music and language learning. This year, more than 1,500 schools from the USA, as well as 20 other countries, are competing – you can see the map of participants here. As our Head of School Mr Mills says, “You can’t beat the power of music as a motivator to foster and ignite languages!”
Using the competition website, students submitted their brackets and predictions as to who will be the winning artist of 2023. For most of Term 2, Year 6 Spanish students have spent the last fifteen minutes of their lessons listening to music by different Spanish-speaking artists and casting a vote for their favourite of the two selections. They were excited to see over 100,000 students from across the world casting their votes as well! At the end of each round, the winning song would advance and our students would track it on their March Madness Brackets.
The songs selected for the playlist provide engaging and enjoyable speaking, listening and vocabulary practice, both in and out of the classroom. Through this activity, students are also exposed to culture through musical genres from Hispanic countries, including salsa, bachata, merengue, reggaeton, Latin pop, rap and trap and vallenato. The competition runs until 20th March and Year 6 students are eagerly waiting to see if any of their brackets win, as well as how many points each student will be awarded. A follow-up article will be published in the Patana News after the end of the competition!
