Day 31 - La música: Engaging students in Argentina’s past as they investigate “la guerra sucia” - Renee Dacey - BHS World Language Dept.

This post originally appeared on the BHS World Language Blog
This past month, BHS’s AP Spanish students have been exploring the theme of personal and public identities throughout Spanish speaking countries and comparing and contrasting them to those of the United States.  Today, students began a unit on Argentina’s guerra sucia (Dirty War) during the 1970s.  As an opening classroom assignment, students listened to the song Ellas danzan solas by Sting and Peter Gabriel.  During the first listening task, students listened to the song as they read through the lyrics in Spanish.  Next, they were asked to draw a visual of their interpretation of the song (and its lyrics).  The video below shows students listening and drawing during the class assignment.

Here are two student examples from class today.  The examples include the students’ visual interpretations along with a recording of their explanation in Spanish of what inspired them to draw the visual that they drew.