Bad Bunny's halftime performance has brought new excitement and attention to Puerto Rico and its music and culture, and to Spanish language as well, which has been absolutely amazing. But it's hard to reference his music directly in elementary school because most of his music is made for adults, not children, and in a school setting especially would not be appropriate to share with students. But of course I was determined to find a way to feed off the energy of his performance!
If you're looking for a song you can comfortably share with elementary students in its original form, I think "El Mundo Es Mío" is the one- the lyrics are not only school appropriate, but the message is empowering and the refrain is simple and easy for elementary students to learn even if they don't speak Spanish.
Here are a few ideas for using this song in elementary music lessons:
1. Steady beat
Use the song as a track to practice showing steady beat through movement or instruments! With Kindergarten and 1st grade I love doing a game I call "follow the leader", where I call out each student's name throughout the song and that student becomes the new leader to come up with a steady beat move for the rest of the class to follow. With older students I will also review classroom instrument names playing techniques by handing out a few different instruments, then calling out a name of an instrument for only those students to play on the steady beat.
2. Rhythm practice
Use the song as a track to have students play rhythms with: they could practice reading rhythms from notation and then play it with the beat of the song, take turns improvising rhythms, or split up into groups and play different rhythms as ostinato patterns, with body percussion or with instruments (bonus points for instruments that are a part of Puerto Rican music, like guiros, maracas, or hand drums!).
3. Solfege
Ask students to identify the solfege in the refrain (la-re-do, la-re-do-ti). This is perfect if you are working on presenting or practicing low la and low ti. Once they have aurally identified the solfege, practice singing the refrain with Curwen hand signs, or have students notate it on the staff. I like using mini erasers and other small manipulatives as note heads for students to practice notating solfege, and I think my bunny mini erasers will be perfect for this!
4. Rap writing
Teach students the brief refrain, "el mundo es mio, el mundo es tuyo". Ask students to think of something that they're proud of about themselves, and then figure out how to say it with the beat in an 8-beat phrase. Have a few students take turns saying their line about something they are proud of, then have the whole class sing the refrain, then a few more students say their line. You could even use a karaoke track of the song to do it with. This could tie into or lead into more lessons to practice developing "flow" in rapping: here are some lesson ideas for teaching rap skills in elementary music.
Of course this is also the perfect opportunity to explore the music of Puerto Rico more broadly as well! Here is a lesson plan for Ambos A Dos, a Puerto Rican game song I love using with Kindergarten, and another set of lessons for El Coqui, a frog song from Puerto Rico I use with 2nd grade. You can search for all my blog posts on Puerto Rico, or on Spanish language songs, on this page. This would also be a great time to explore Puerto Rican musical styles like Reggaeton, Plena, or Bomba... more on that to come.
Are you planning to talk about Bad Bunny with your students at all? Have you found other ways to incorporate his music in your elementary music lessons? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
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