Logistics: Manie Musicale

So, I’ve had a few people ask me how my #maniemusicale2o16 is going now that I’m actually into the fray.

The answer: pretty much as I expected, but we’re behind by about a day, maybe two from my original estimation. Here’s what I’ve been doing each day:

Round 1: The Sweet Sixteen

For the Sweet (original) 16 songs, we watched two videos per day. So, this took 8 days total. This round was for exposure, so we just watched two videos per day and voted immediately. We talked about which ones we liked and which videos were funny, cool, or weird. Some were weird and cool and funny (Papaoutai, anyone?!)

I keep all of the votes in a folder in my Google Drive, and it’s a really simple voting template. You can see an example here.

I had students watch the videos individually on their devices. My HS students have MacBooks and my MS students have iPads. I posted the link to my playlist on our Schoology page, so about two days into the start, they knew where to go and find the new videos. I wanted them to have access to the playlist so that they could find the information about their favorites and listen to them on their own if we found their “jam.”

Round 2: The Elite Eight (Les huits élites)

During this round, I wanted to not only re-familiarize students with each song that they picked in the first round, but get to know the songs a little bit better. We listen to one song each day, and vote every two days for this round.

I’ve done two types of activities here: cloze and “put the lyrics in order.” Then, we talk a little about the song and highlight some of the key structures. We’re working on the structures “je veux” and “je ne veux pas” right now, and SO MANY of the songs include that structure. It is WONDERFUL.

For the “put the lyrics in order” pages, I just group students in groups of two, and have them put only the chorus in order. I encourage them to follow along and sing if they want! All I do is copy/paste the lyrics, scramble them, and cut them out. I love to scramble them because some students try to just put the cut lines together and then they find out they’re wrong.

Dernière danse chorus

Place de la République chorus

For a cloze, I love LyricsTraining.com. Students can repeat, etc. by themselves, so it’s really great for students who get conscious if others write more than them. It works well because all of my students have a device, but you could also use paper. Also, did you know that now on LT, you can create your own activities? I love this because I pull out all the words that I want students to focus on in the song, so we can talk about those structures or reuse them afterward!!

Also, with LT, students can choose between typing the word they hear (write mode), or picking between 4 options (choice mode.) A lot of students prefer choice mode, which I love for novices, but I also try to challenge students to write if it’s a song they need a little differentiate. We turn it into a little competition for high scores, and some students like to replay to beat their previous score.

The only downside to this is that all of the songs I use on LT are SO repetitive. For songs like Papaoutai and On danse, I chose to do this because putting the chorus in order would have been too simple.

Here’s an example of a LT I made for Papaoutai. We were focusing on il vs. elle, the question “où,” and the connector “ou.” It was a little tricky for students in that way. I also recycled some vocab like family and descriptions.

Round 3: The Final Four (Les quatres qualifiées!)

We have not started this round yet. I plan on looking more closely at the chorus of each song in the final four and really trying to figure out what they’re saying. That way, students will know what they voted for, and not just which video was cool/which one was catchy/which one would annoy their classmates!

I will post activities here when we get there! :]

Round 4: The Championship Game

Again, we’re not here yet, so stay posted for my ideas on this. I’m thinking they’ll have to happen after spring break, so I’ll be mulling over possibilities for this! If you have suggestions, I’d love to know!