Recordatorios Musicales: Music Cues

I've been trying to use music a lot more in my classes, especially with middle school. I've been structuring lessons, reviews, and assignments around music, as well as incorporating it into classroom management.

I was inspired by one of my coworkers, who is using music cues for math class. She uses popular theme music from television shows, played through this app. The app is nice because its designed for the classroom. (It doesn't automatically play the next song on a playlist, and you can set a specific time for the cue to begin.)

Here are the musical cues I've been using in my middle school classes, including links to the songs and the specific clips: Musical Cue Playlist. Most of these are from songs that students turned in as part of a project this past quarter, which helps with student buy-in.

• La Vida es un carnaval - Celia Cruz
•  Transition to groups. (20 seconds.)
•  Te extraño - Xtreme.
• End of class: Write down homework, get ready to be dismissed. (51 seconds.)
• La Tortura - Shakira.
• Get out homework, staple as needed, turn in to the correct folder. (1 minute, 22 seconds.)
• Pa' Bailar - Bajofondo y Julieta Venegas.
• Shut down computers and put away laptops according to our class procedure. (3 minutes, 36 seconds.)

Most of the lyrics are pretty carefully chosen, mostly because I think I'm hilarious. (Por supuesto, la tortura es la tarea... y no de excusas vivo yo.)

On that note, if anyone can rewrite La Totura to specifically be about lost homework, they will be my personal hero. (Fue una tortura.... perderte.) If I can get one of my students to take this on as a project, I will consider the year a success.

Technical tips:

I use Youtube and Dirpy to create clips from specific bits of the songs, but there are plenty of other similar tools out there, for all platforms. If you do use Dirpy, make sure you use the correct buttons. It is a free and ad-supported site, so it's easy to accidentally click ads.