10 Best Practices for Implementing Flocabulary in Your Classroom
By now, you may have read about our latest units, resources and features. We’ve given you much to explore, but this exciting, albeit hectic, back-to-school season might have you short on time. Have no fear! Fellow Flocab fans are here to help you make the most out of your classroom (lite) or school-wide subscription by providing tips and best practices that will effectively encourage your students to engage, create and master content across the curriculum.
You, too, will have your Flocab classroom routine down pat in no time!
Here are the top 10 best practices based on the comments from our most avid users (you’ll likely want to incorporate these into your daily and/or weekly instruction):
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This resource exists solely because of the feedback we received from educators and administrators, all over the nation. Now, Flocabulary aligns to all state standards for all academic subjects! We’ve made it seamless for our users to select and implement relevant content for their individual classrooms. Learn more or start browsing to see how Flocabulary fits into your curriculum.
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This is a popular and easy way to initiate Flocab use in the classroom. Angie Lobue, a 5th grade teacher at White Oak Intermediate School in Texas, writes,
“When my fifth grade students enter (before going to their enhancement class), we start the day with an upbeat video (or two or three) from Flocab. There’s not ONE song that my students haven’t loved. You can see heads bobbing, smiles growing, learning occurring, and feet tapping.”
Marcy G, a 1st grade teacher in Oregon validates this practice:
“I use Flocabulary when launching a new concept or topic with my [first graders]. Flocabulary provides my students with another view of the topic being taught, thus allowing me to reach more learning styles within my lessons.”
As we say, it starts with engagement and leads to literacy.
Pause & Play introduces or reiterates key takeaways by prompting discussion points during the video. It’s a great way for students to develop critical thinking skills! Lisa Butler, a social studies teacher at Hershey Middle School in Pennsylvania, shares her idea on how to implement this feature:
“Students could use those as the questions, then they would develop a claim and find evidence from the original article cited in the Week in Rap’s Lyric Notes.”
Awesome suggestion, Lisa!
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Andrew Carter, a fifth grade teacher at Roslyn Road Elementary in Illinois, shares his students’ enthusiasm: “They enjoy hearing, discussing and just listening to the news in creative beats.”
Michael Kaufman of Carol Morgan School in Dominican Republic further shares that the Week In Rap is an opportunity to practice public speaking skills, encouraging students to start statements with “I agree…because..” or “I disagree with the idea that…because..” and hosting socratic seminars to facilitate these discussions. Amazing!
The Week in Rap/Week in Rap Jr. videos are especially popular among social studies teachers as it highlights current events—but with Read & Respond, students will master the content while advancing their reading capabilities. What a great way to develop critical literacy skills!
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Joanne Wiskowski, a third grade teacher at Balboa Academy in Panama has loved and used Flocabulary for the past two years. “We have found the units to be easy to follow, complete with lesson plans to print out and use. We have used Flocabulary for small group work and to differentiate within groups,” Joanne shares. She is especially excited to use Lyric Lab in this group setting for the purpose of boosting knowledge retention and creativity as students write their own rhymes with new vocabulary.
Enjoy these features with a school-wide subscription! It’s a great way to address learning gaps at the end of every unit. How, you ask? The formative assessments are assignable and auto-graded! Students’ scores are recorded digitally on a comprehension grid illustrating these achievement gaps so you can address them promptly.
Jennifer Findley, a 5th grade teacher in Georgia, advises, “Use the results of the assessment as a starting point for small group re-teaching.” We couldn’t agree more, Jennifer!
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This innovative idea came from Heather Kindschy at Mt. Bethel Elementary in Georgia. She elaborates on the instructions given to her students, “Your job is to create a high-quality and engaging rap music video. Your driving question for this project is: How can we, as educational video creators, make a rap music video that teaches other students about these important people who changed the course of history?”
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Kathleen Amari, a 5th grade teacher at Chapman Elementary School in Ohio, blogs:
I used the “Oversharing” video in my classroom this year. We were starting our own Kidblogs and it was a great way to review privacy on the Internet with my students.” Our library continues to grow with videos that hit on a myriad of classroom culture conversations, such as “Bullying,” “Conflict Resolution,” “Managing Frustration” and so many more! Don’t you wish this was available when you were a grade school student?
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Henry Osten, a science teacher in Tennessee would back us up on that! This U.S. News article shares how the teacher experienced difficulty while engaging students with traditional textbook science and decided to take a different approach, “…he tried to meet students on their level, trying things like ‘Flocabulary,’ where he and his students rap words and their definitions back and forth.”
As our content library grows, you can count on an increasing number of videos and lesson plans to support STEM curriculum. Some of our most popular include “Coding,” “Computer Programming” and “Coding: Conditionals.” Stay tuned for more.
This practice is student-tested and teacher-approved! Heidi Martin, a 1st grade teacher at Goodland Elementary School in Racine, WI, blogs:
I will tell you… it is TEACHER HEAVEN when you hear your students rapping about concepts you are teaching in their FREE TIME (for fun)!”
There you have it. Teachers, we hope you found this post helpful. If you’d like a more extensive training on any of our aforementioned features, consider our professional development opportunities. We’re always just a click or call away. And if you have your own favorite Flocabulary implementation tips, share them with us on Twitter!