Looking for a great movie talk + song for a thematic medical unit, like the Huellas curriculum? Look no further! Daddy Yankee is here to help you.

I knew that there must have been a reason why I spent (probably) too many of my university days listening to the amazing and talented Daddy Yankee, reggaetonero extraordinaire. He was, along with Shakira, one of the initial Spanish speaking artists that drew me in to discover the power of acquiring a language through music. I grew up during the so-called “Latin boom” of music in the dominant pop culture in the U.S. Although I understand criticisms of this time in music, I am personally grateful for this exposure–as a high schooler, well before the days of spotify, it introduced me to a whole world of Spanish input that I would have otherwise never discovered at that point in my life.

Anyways, back to the movietalk + song: At my previous school, I enjoyed using the Huellas curriculum by author and teacher Carrie Toth. I used it for my Spanish 3 level classes, but it was also utilized by my colleague in Spanish 4. If you are considering Huellas, I’d recommend you try out a few of her free units! I am now at a different school and wanted to get this blog post up before my memory faded!

Huellas 1, Unit 9 was one of my favorite units to teach.. probably ever, from any curriculum. I love the “humpty dumpty” unit hook, contagioso is a blast to play with students, and talking about how antibiotics not are used on viruses… real world info, people! Both the unit hook and contagioso were commonly mentioned in year end surveys by my students as their favorite things of the year. WOW, if that’s not an endorsement for this unit, I don’t know what would be.

As with anything, I modified it a bit to teach in my classroom. Although I a certain part of my heart belongs to Juanes *yet another throwback to university days*, I don’t care for that song in the unit. However… “Llamado de emergencia” by Daddy Yankee is perfect for this unit.

Not only is Llamado de emergencia absolutely chock-full of medical terminology, it largely was very comprehensible to my Spanish 3 students once we worked out the meaning of the medical vocab. Grammatically, it stays in the present tense, mixed with commands, and a few references to the subjunctive. The medical terms go beyond what Huellas asks for, so there is less sheltering of vocabulary here, but I did not assess this bit of vocab, and instead it was a resource for them during the final assessment project of creating their “patient.”

Can it get any better? Yes, it can. The music video is absolute storytelling gold! It was an excellent way to integrate one of the unit target structures of se da cuenta de que. We also had done a previous unit of relationships (not part of Huellas), which played into this storyline quite well, however students would be able to follow a movietalk with this story without that unit as well!

The ending is perfect for asking students to predict… What does he realize?

My students were well aware at this point in the year that Daddy Yankee is actually a CI curriculum writer. We had listened to ¿Qué tengo que hacer? (SO MANY repetitions of tengo que) earlier that year and his song BONITA had also appeared, and made it to the finals, of our Music March Madness. Poor kiddos who really don’t like him… but sigh, we can’t please them all!

How did I implement this resource?

To my best recollection, I did one class period of the movietalk/backstory first. I front loaded se da cuenta de que. I used the present tense to narrate the story. I made a big deal and paused for the big, What does Daddy Yankee realize? moment. You’ll know what I mean when you watch the music video. Then, we did a Write & Discuss in the past tense.

On the second and third day, I reinforced “he realized” with screenshots from the music video, re-told the story in multiple ways, and finally listened to the song and established meaning of the lyrics. If I find my notes and materials on Canva from last year, maybe I’ll post them one day.

If you’ve never used this video and song in class, give it a try! Let me know how it goes in the comments below.