If you’ve been playing last week’s amazing Chinese Knowledge video on repeat all weekend, then it’s time to change up your Flocab World History playlist! Check out this spectacular student-made Fertile Crescent video! Thanks to Todd LaVogue from West Palm Beach for letting us know about the great work happening in his classroom.

UPDATE: Mr. LaVogue has done it again! His class has left the Fertile Crescent behind, and they can now “Walk like an Egyptian” in their latest video. Watch these inspiring students now:

Want to see your class featured on the Hip-Hop Classroom? Click here for an easy-to-follow lesson plan and send your video our way.

The Odyssey, Shakespeare and Huck Finn…yea, we’ve rapped about them. We wedded literature with rap, and never looked back. But recently, various authors have decided to intertwine the classics with an even newer form: social media. We’ve put together a list of our favorite re-imaginings of the classics on Facebook and Twitter, and included lesson plans to adapt each idea for the classroom.

Literature, meet the Internet. Internet, literature.

1. Facebook Newsfeed Literature.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that those who already love Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice will laugh at the Facebook news feed interpretations of these classic tales. Read them here and here. And for those who are having difficulty understanding the stories, the Facebook recaps can serve as useful plot summaries. For the well read, this quiz tests your knowledge of literature through status updates of characters.

Lesson Plan Ideas: 1. Have your students summarize the plot of a story in the form of Facebook status updates.  2. Hold a discussion about how the availability of social media, or other modern technology, might have changed the plots of older stories. 3. Have students create a “Fakebook,” or facebook profile for a famous historical person or character.

2. Perform a Play Online.

We made our Much Ado about Nothing video for READ Magazine’s online production of the Shakespearean comedy. You can read about the innovative online play here. And the Mudlark and the Royal Shakespeare Company presented a twitter version of Romeo and Juliet, playfully called Such Tweet Sorrow.

Lesson Plan Ideas: 1. Cast students in a play. Following the example from READ magazine, have students create Facebook updates or tweets to act it out. 2. For more advanced students, discuss and analyze how the performance of a play online compares with a live performance.

3. Write a Novel on Twitter.

This is a serialized novel to the extreme. One student decided to write a novel, line by line, in twitter updates.

Lesson Plan Ideas: 1. On Twitter (or on paper), have students write one sentence of an original novel (or short story) per day. 2. Study Hemingway’s famous six word story (For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.) Read more six word stories online. Then have students write their own six word tales!

4. @Bloomsday.

Today is Bloomsday. For those of you unacquainted with this special day, Bloomsday comes from a book called Ulysses by James Joyce. Arguably the pinnacle of modernist experimental fiction, the novel follows one day in the life of Leopold Bloom. And that day is June 16. So to celebrate, devoted readers will tweet sections of the 600+ page book. Follow @lyyses on twitter today to check out this modern modernist experiment. Read more about the project here.

Lesson Plan Ideas: 1. Following the idea of Bloomsday, ask your students write a story about one very typical day in their life. 2. Divide up a novel that you’ve read as a class, and have students summarize sections or chapters of it, and possibly even tweet them!

Sign up for Flocabulary’s newsletter for more activity ideas like these and free videos! And follow Flocabulary on Twitter!

“Where can I find some fun, educational, summer activities for my kids?”

We’ve got you covered.

The “summer slump” is a dangerous reality, and supports the notion that learning outside the classroom is so essential. Organizations like the Harlem Children Zone have recently placed an emphasis on helping families to provide a safe and educational environment for babies and toddlers. Their goal is to prevent any child from falling behind before they are even in the classroom. These same efforts should be made to prevent kids from falling behind during summer vacation.

Kids need opportunities to scoop up knowledge and practice their skills so they remember how to activate their minds when they get back inside the classroom. But parents don’t need to enroll their kids in fancy academic programs. Engagement and learning can occur on the living room couch, at the playground, or walking down the street to grab a slice of pizza.

So here are some ways to keep the wheels greased:

1. Story Telling
Parents can easily adapt Heather Wolpert-Gawron’s thoughtful story-telling lesson plan for the home. Sit down with a child and ask him or her to tell you a story about something that occurred that day. This activity will give kids a chance to reflect, organize their thoughts, and present. If you share a story first it might give them a better idea of how to form a narrative with facts about their day.

Read more

Practice literacy skills all over town!

At the end of the school year, it can sometimes be tough to keep your students in their seats. They gaze out the window, as if the mere act of looking hard enough will make summer materialize faster. So why fight the call of the outdoors? Send your students on a scavenger hunt around your town or city! They’ll practice their language arts skills all over town, and see for themselves that you really can “use this in real life.”

With younger students, the whole class can walk around and do a few activities together. For older kids, the scavenger hunt makes a great homework assignment–ask students to pick 1 or 2 activities! School already out? Save it for September–this is a great way to start off the year.

The Scavenger Hunt!

1. Grammar Challenge: Find three signs with incorrect spelling or grammar. Photograph yourself with them. Explain how you would correct those signs. Also explain the impacts and confusions that this incorrect signage could cause in the world.

2. Analyze Advertisement: Find three interesting advertisements on a billboard or bus. Photograph yourself with them. Analyze all of the ways in which it is trying to convince you to do/buy what it is advertising. After you do that, explain whether or not you are convinced.

3. Educational Eavesdropping: Listen to at least 3 conversations on the bus. Transcribe (copy down) the conversations to the best of your ability. Describe what you learned about the people and their personalities/lives, and how you learned it. Do you think you know a lot about them?

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Why Every Teacher Should Join Twitter

“Don’t reinvent the wheel.”
Teachers hear these four words so many times from mentors and colleagues that they could easily mistake their profession for a career in tire maintenance. But often, these well meaning advisers don’t explain how to find this magical realm of grade-level readings, math exercises, wheel blueprints.

Well, we’re here to tell you that we’ve found the ideal land of inspiring teacher collaboration and perpetual professional development. Teachers: Drop what you’re doing, and get on Twitter. Though Twitter exists in the digital realm, the benefits for classrooms are very real.

Shaelynn Farnsworth, a high school English teacher in Iowa, connected with a teacher in Sweden on twitter…and ended up taking her students there at the end of the year! Eight hours after the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death, 100 social studies teachers walked into their classrooms with complete and inspired lesson plans that they developed together on Twitter, ready to teach about the extremely recent and important news.

On Twitter, teachers share time-tested lesson plans and brainstorm new ones. They ask questions of a diverse group of educators, and get immediate answers. And they form a trusted community. All by using twitter’s 140-character updates. We’re inspired daily by the ideas and conversations from the twitter educator communities, and so we knew we needed to share this resource with the Flocabulary community.

Proof of the twitter community’s devotion to educational practice? We asked (on twitter) for teachers to tell us about how twitter has transformed their practice. We were happily swamped with answers. Five tweeting teachers tell you, in their own words, why joining the twitter community will change your practice, and how you can get started.

A very special thanks to Becky Ellis, Shaelynn Farnsworth, Greg Kulowiec, Shervette Miller, and Molly Myers for sharing their experiences about using twitter to amplify their teaching practice. Once they convince you to join twitter, you can follow these twitter community leaders by clicking on their names. And then follow Flocabulary on twitter—whenever we find a cool and relevant educational resource, we immediately share it with the educator community.
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Is 14 the “magical age” for creating your music taste?

We know that music can make students love learning and help make the facts stick! But it’s not just the facts that linger on. The music you listen to as a kid sticks with you forever. And what year is most specifically influential?

The New York Times writes that, “Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes. We’re just reaching a point in our cognitive development when we’re developing our own tastes. And musical tastes become a badge of identity.”

Is the music from your fourteenth year still inspiring you? The Flocabulary staff was jamming on Black Sheep, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, Tribe Called Quest, and Green Day when we were 14. Comment below to tell us what you were listening to at 14, and whether or not you think it shaped you.

Read the original New York Times article here, as well as a lesson plan from their education blog, The Learning Network.

What is Crambo?

Flocab has prattled on how to rap battle. But let’s take it back a few hundred years, and kick it very old school.

In the scheme of world history, rap battles may be relatively new. But people have been trying to outwit each other through rhyme for ages. Over 600 years before the beginning of hip-hop, they called it Crambo.

Called rap’s “distant cousin,” and coming from a phrase meaning “re-stewed cabbage,” Crambo was a rhyming game played possibly as early as the 1300s. It became popular in England in the 1700s. The goal of the game was similar to a rap battle–use your wittiest words to mock your opponent and make the audience laugh.  But instead of rapping to a beat, you had to copy the rhyme pattern of the previous person, and whoever couldn’t come up with a rhyme would lose. Often the rhymes had to pertain to–and often mock–a specific person or subject.

Use Crambo to Teach Rhyme Scheme:

Crambo is the perfect activity for teaching rhyme scheme. And at the same time, you can use Crambo to review historical subjects, literature, or math.

1. Tell your students a little bit about Crambo. Learn more here: here.

2. Pick a subject and write a Crambo rhyme. Write it on the board. An example for a unit on Christopher Columbus:

There’s a new guy among us
His name’s Christopher Columbus
He brought diseases from Spain,
And now we all feel the pain.

3. Have your students to label the rhyme scheme. In this case, its AABB. (But it could be whatever you choose)

4. Ask your students to write their own rhymes about Christopher Columbus using the AABB rhyme scheme. For extra challenge, their words should rhyme with yours. So they might respond:

Did Christopher Columbus
Arrive on a bus?
No, he took all his trips
On a group of three ships!

5. Have your students share rhymes with the class. Let the best quip win!

6. You can have your students pick the subject and set the rhyme scheme for new units!

Share some of your starter rhymes in the comments!

It’s no secret: Flocabulary loves Shakespeare. From Shakespeare is Hip-Hop to our new Much Ado About Nothing video, we can’t get enough of the Bard.

So when the producers of the new documentary Shakespeare High asked to feature one of our songs in the soundtrack of the film, we were thrilled to say yes.

Shakespeare High tells the story of a diverse group of California teenagers who are preparing to act in a Shakespeare competition. The competitors don’t just include theater students; former gang members, star football players, and kids whose town includes nothing but a Banana Museum all find inspiration in interpreting Shakespeare.

Watch a preview here:

Follow the film on facebook or twitter to learn when it is coming to a town near you.

Last week we had the opportunity to catch a screening of the film at the TriBeCa Film Festival (and hear our song The Merry Wanderer play over the end credits)! We learned that Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, Richard Dreyfuss, and many other well-known actors all got their start at The Drama Teachers Association of Southern California Shakespeare Festival featured in the film.

But producing Academy Award-winning actors is not the festival’s raison d’etre–the Oscar statuettes are merely a nice bonus. The festival exists because it teaches students teamwork, communication skills, literacy, accountability. Because it gives its participants motivation to come to school. Because it makes learning fun.

Shakespeare High reaffirms Flocabulary’s firm belief that arts education is crucial–not just to create future artists, but to inspire and motivate all students.

Before watching our Much Ado About Nothing video, you may have never been able to imagine Shakespeare as a rapper. But thanks to animator Nate Schoman, you’ll never see Shakespeare the same way again. Nate has animated Flocab fan favorites like Huck Finn, Five Things, and The Odyssey.

Now, we bring you an exclusive peek behind the scenes. Read on to learn about his animation process, his favorite Flocab video, and why playing Led Zeppelin drum parts are all part of a days work.
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Can you tell us about your process for animating the Much Ado video?

There’s a lot that goes into making these videos, but the process is pretty similar: from Concept, to Pre-Production, to Production, to Post-Production.

First I’ll listen to the track, and work closely with the Flocab creative team to decide what we want the video to look like – from the characters, to the setting, to the behavior and look of the text.  Next I’ll get all those different pieces ready for animating – a lot like a traditional animator might.  In Much Ado, for example, there were a lot of pieces to prep – including eleven different mouth ‘shapes’ so Peter the Janitor and MC Shakespeare could be lip-synced to the audio.

After all the pieces are ready comes the really fun part: the animating.  Working frame-by-frame – with more than 7000 frames in one of these videos – the going can be tough.  But the moment I watch that first clip at speed, and the characters I created jump to life, it’s just the coolest.  Once the animation is done, it’s a matter of finishing touches and titles, and off to the internet she goes!

You’ve animated a few Flocabulary videos. Which is your favorite, and why?

I’ve enjoyed collaborating with Flocab on every project we’ve produced together.  Each project is uniquely challenging, and Blake and Alex have given me a lot of creative control, which is great from a visual artist’s perspective.  If I had to pick one favorite …  I have to say I do have a soft spot for Huck Finn, which just came together so nicely.  But working on Much Ado was a blast also, and it turned out great too.

What inspired you to go into animation? Where did you learn how to animate?

That’s tough.  My inspirations are so many!  There’s something amazing about the medium of animation itself though – the ability to just dream something up out of the corners of your mind, and with a little practice and a lot of patience, to see that vision realized – to be able to share that vision with others, it’s really an awesome feeling.

My first experiment with animation was around age 11, when my best friend and I made a pretty epic, albeit amateur, stop-motion animation about the pirate invasion of a colonial fort.  There was cannon fire, swordplay – and ultimately, the sinking of the pirate ship.  I’ve honed my skills a lot since then, and actually now have my degree in visual effects animation – but I’ve always held on to the imagination that went into that pirate movie.

Flocabulary isn’t the only way you’re combining music and education. You’re also a music teacher for budding rockers. What’s that like?

That’s right.  In addition to my work in video, I also teach kids to rock out on the electric bass and guitar, drums and keyboards.  For all the fortune I’ve had being able to study music and the arts in my life, passing the gift forward is the least I can do.

For the most part, the programs I work with are performance based, meaning the kids get individual lessons on their instruments, but rehearse together as a group to perform shows at some legit venues.  I’ve directed several casts through long months of rehearsing, really a ton of material –  and watching these kids take the stage in the end, and take ownership of the material, is not unlike watching the characters come to life in animation – it’s a truly unique and rewarding feeling.  I’m as proud of my music students as I am of my visual art.  And as far as I’m concerned, any ‘day at the office’ that involves teaching someone to bang out a Led Zeppelin drum part or to wail on a Black Sabbath guitar riff – that’s a good day at the office!

Thanks Nate! See more of Nate Schoman’s work at www.NESchoman.com

Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for the highly educated. Actors performed his plays at the Globe Theater for people from all walks of life—and all ages! Keep the tradition alive at your elementary school. When presented in the right way, the stories in Shakespeare’s plays are perfect for even the youngest students. We rounded up resources that will help you get your students started on a lifelong love for Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s Words

-Use Green Eggs and Ham to introduce the idea of iambic pentameter! Full lesson plan here.

-Act out the Three Witches scene from Macbeth. Full lesson plan here.

-Spring marks the beginning of the main Shakespeare performance season. Take your students to see a local production of Shakespeare. Search for Shakespeare + Your Home Town on Google to see if there are any upcoming productions. Many Shakespeare companies offer educational discounts to create lifelong Shakespeare fans.

-Spice up your vocab study with weird Shakespeare words.

Visual Art Resources

-Print Shakespeare’s face and color it in here and here!

-Make Shakespeare scrapbooks!

-Construct your very own Globe theater with this printout.

-Illustrate a scene from the play. Full lesson plan here.

Online Shakespeare Fun

-Watch Flocabulary’s Much Ado About Nothing or Macbeth video and ask students to summarize the plot.

-Play Shakespeare online games, including mazes, crosswords, and word searches!

-Take an online literary field trip to the Globe Theater using Google Earth.

…and even Math??

-Teach students about counting syllables with Sonnets! The Sonnet is a challenging poetry form, but you can modify this lesson on group sonnets for the younger crowd by challenging your students write lines with ten syllables.