La Curandera & El Niágara en bicicleta

La Curandera por Carmen Lomas Garza

La Curandera por Elastic Bond

I recently came across the song "La curandera" by Elastic Bond (link Zambombazo wksht and other resourcest) while listening to Betsy and Zachary Jones' LAMC 2013 Artists' Choice Podcast (29:38). It is an excellent song that expresses some great cultural practices and perspectives related to health, so I decided to use it in a unit called Perspectivas de la salud (website with authentic resources linked at bottom and UbD outline with assessment descriptions). 

The essential questions for the unit are the following:

• ¿Cómo es el sistema de salud en la República Dominicana y en otros países lationamericanos?
• ¿Cuáles son algunas prácticas medicinales alternativas y cuáles son las raíces de estas tradiciones?
• ¿Cuáles son las persectivas culturales sobre los sistemas y las prácticas de la salud en estas tres canciones: El Niágara en bicicleta, Yerbatero and La curandera?
• ¿Cómo comparan y contrastan las prácticas y perspectivas expresadas en las canciones con las tuyas?

I created a short worksheet with questions about "La Curandera" and hope to create a cloze worksheet once I find the lyrics (or the time to transcribe them). La curandera has a lot in common with Yerbatero by Juanes. And both will contrast very well with El Niágara en bicicleta, which led me to the next update to the unit. El Niágara en bicicleta is the first song that I use in the unit. It illustrates the deficiencies of the health care system in the Dominican Republic (with some obvious exaggerations). It also leads students to understand why alternative medicine might be a reasonable solution for many people who live in a place where the health care system is not very good and/or available to all.

The song has always been difficult for students to interpret and understand. So when I read a post called "Authentic Resources + Embedded Reading" on  Crystal Barragán's (@srtabarragan) excellent blog, I decided that creating an embedded reading for this song would be the perfect way to get students to understand the song. Crystal also shares a variety of activities that can be done with each version. This is my first attempt at creating an embedded reading, but I think it will make the interpretation of the song much easier for my students.

I have never used embedded readings before, but I am excited about this idea because I think my students will be able to understand and interpret songs in a much better way and with much more confidence! I look forward to creating more embedded readings for other songs this year.

How about you? Have you used embedded readings? Any suggestions?

**Also, if you use the song Azul by Natalia Lafourcade, she talks about the song starting at 9:38 on the LAMC 2013 Artists' Choice Podcast. I use that song in the first unit my Cultura y Civilización class. The unit is called "Los miedos" and it is the perfect way to start the class.**