3 teacher-initiated strategies for Flocabulary instruction
Flocabulary is a versatile vocabulary platform teachers and students can use in numerous ways. While some approaches may be student-centered, research shows that explicit instruction of vocabulary is an important part of student acquisition. Here are a few ways teachers can initiate, lead, and utilize Flocabulary in the classroom to support students as they master academic terms.
Find dedicated time each day or once per week to explicitly teach vocabulary
Vocabulary is the biggest predictor of reading comprehension, but sometimes phonics, phonemic awareness, or fluency are bigger priorities for students. To boost reading comprehension teachers can set aside a dedicated time daily or weekly to work on vocabulary terms. Flocabulary’s Word Up vocabulary program was built to help students with Tier 2 terms, those words like “analyze, explain, or compare” that students will see across all core subject areas and in standardized testing.
Whether teachers dedicate 15 minutes twice per week, 10 minutes a day, or a slightly longer block once per week to the Word Up program, we know Flocabulary helps students better understand those common academic terms they see in their learning materials. Word Up is divided into grade-level lessons, or units, teachers can work through doing one per week or one every two weeks throughout the school year depending on the pacing that works best for their students.
Check out Word Up for your grade-level(s) while you’re planning your schedule for the next year in your classroom, or just finding more ways to help students understand these terms.
Add Flocabulary videos and instructional activities to any of your existing lesson materials
Word Up is a great way to support students with Tier 2 vocabulary across curriculum, but Flocabulary’s K-12 standards-aligned core subject lessons can support Tier 3 vocabulary mastery. Tier 3 terms are those subject-specific content terms like, “force, gravity, magnetic” in science or “addition, sum, and addend” in math. No matter what subjects you teach, there’s a Flocabulary lesson for you.
Find a lesson on a topic you’re already teaching and use the hip-hop video to bring vocabulary into the lesson in a culturally responsive format that connects to student interests. Start a new topic or lesson by showing the video to your whole class. Show it a second time with discussion mode on and the video will stop at important points for students to engage in discussions about concepts and new vocabulary.
Follow up the video with the content you want to teach from other resources you have or use additional Flocabulary activities with the class to support further vocabulary mastery. The Vocab Game is a great way for students to review new Tier 3 terms from the video. Students answer questions to build a beat. When students answer questions correctly more instruments are added to the final beat.
Use activities to gather data on student understanding
Flocabulary is a culturally responsive teaching tool and a vocabulary platform, but it can also be used to gather data on student progress of mastery of vocabulary terms. Teachers can use the data from the Quiz activity to surface information on student understanding. When teachers assign the Quiz to students through a school or district Flocabulary license, they are tested on the vocabulary terms related to the lesson. Students work through multiple choice questions and can use Microsoft’s built-in Immersive Reader for additional support.
Activities like Read & Respond can give students direct feedback on their own understanding. Read & Respond questions and answers are excellent practice for the kinds of questions students will see in summative assessments or standardized testing asking them to read a passage and respond to a question about it. After students answer a question the activity can prompt them to check their own work.
Start searching Flocabulary for videos aligned to your standards. Use the favorite tool to mark ones you want to come back to in the future for lessons.