I love using songs in Spanish in my elementary music lessons. I have a high percentage of Spanish-speaking students in my school, and the students who don't speak Spanish are still usually familiar enough with the language that it's easy for them to learn the lyrics and a fun way to learn some new vocabulary while practicing musical skills and concepts. Here are 3 Spanish language songs I use with my 5th and 6th grade classes year-round (not just during Hispanic Heritage Month!) to teach specific musical concepts.
1. El Mundo Es Mio
This is the only song by Bad Bunny I've found that's appropriate for elementary school, and it's worth using simply as a way to bring the music and artists many of the students are listening to into the classroom! But I love using it as a template for practicing flow and rap writing. These may not be skills you're used to seeing listed in an elementary music curriculum because most center skills and concepts from Western classical art music, but I believe they are very important to include in a well-rounded, inclusive, decolonized elementary music curriculum- you can read more about how I teach rap in elementary music in this post, and more about my thoughts on how to more authentically incorporate hip-hop into elementary music curriculum in this post.
If you aren't familiar, here is the song "El Mundo Es Mio". It has a very simple refrain that students can pick up immediately that translates to "the world is mine, the world is yours", and the rest of the lyrics basically are about believing in yourself/ don't listen to the haters. After introducing the song and learning the refrain, I have students each write an 8-beat rap about something they are proud of about themselves. I use this lesson after they have already been practicing flow for a bit, so I play the backing track for the song while they think and tell them to make sure their lyrics fit with the track. Then I have a few students rap their lines in a row and then have the whole class sing the refrain, then back to a few more students rapping their lines followed by the refrain until we go through the whole class. Because it's a slower beat students have an easier time fitting their lyrics with the track in a way that sounds good, and it's a great way to build classroom community because students naturally start hyping each other up during the whole activity. You can see more ways I used the song in my lessons to teach other musical concepts with different grade levels after his superbowl half time performance in this blog post.
2. Tutuca
I just discovered this Argentinian concentration game/ hand clapping song this year and I love using it to practice improvisation! Here's a demonstration of the game- basically each student takes turns saying a 4-beat phrase using a combination of 4 Argentinian snack names, and the class repeats it back with motions that are assigned to each snack name. All of this needs to be done on the steady beat. I used the game this year as a way to get students used to improvising 4-beat phrases by teaching them the game but modifying it slightly so they are not allowed to pause before they say their pattern (as they sometimes do in the demonstration video). We start very slow and have the class echo back the patterns without the motions- just the words- and then once they get used to it start speeding up and then add in the motions. You can read more about the game and other lesson ideas using it in this blog post.
This is the most commonly-used song in elementary music circles on my list and it's perfect for introducing and practicing dotted quarter- single eighth rhythms. It's a Mexican passing game that is pretty simple for students to learn (read my tips for teaching passing games in this post) and gets my older students to experience and practice maintaining a steady beat while singing the song with the target rhythm in it, which is no small feat at this age! I have students learn the passing game first while I sing the song, and then once they've gotten the hang of the passing I have them add the singing. After getting the passing game going with the singing added in I have students identify where the notes fall with the beats in the first line of the song to discover the 1.5 beat dotted quarter note. You can read more about how I use the song in my lessons, as well as other activities I use to practice the dotted quarter note rhythm, in this blog post.
I hope this gives you some new ideas to incorporate more Spanish language into your upper elementary music lessons! There are plenty more that I've done but these are definitely my favorites to come back to every year. If you want to see all of the lesson ideas, choir songs, and performance ideas using Spanish (and many other languages) I've shared over the years, you can see them all listed by language here.
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