Tried and true tips for teaching your first Flocabulary lesson
Welcome to back-to-school season with Flocab! We know you’re busy preparing for your students, and we’re here to help you by providing lesson plan ideas to incorporate into your curriculum. We’ve compiled ideas and lessons to complement and enhance your instruction, whether you’re introducing concepts, mastering key terms and ideas, or establishing a positive classroom culture.
We asked some teachers to share their tried and true tips for teaching with Flocabulary. Whether you’re a Flocab beginner or not, you can use these ideas in your classroom for back-to-school and year-round.
Tried and true tips for teaching your first Flocabulary lesson
Start instruction with SEL lessons
Social and Emotional Learning is important for every age group and helps build a positive classroom culture at the beginning of the year. Here’s what fellow teachers have to say!
Goal Setting
I love Flocabulary lesson plans and so do my students. They are engaging and easy to implement. I plan on using the SMART Goals Planning lesson plan. So often our students know we expect them to grow, but that’s like putting someone on a road that has multiple destinations. They need to have a specific destination in mind that they can work towards getting to, so that the road doesn’t seem boring, tiresome or endless. This lesson plan only takes one video, and is perfect for those days that you can’t teach academic content but you want to ensure you are being a productive, effective educator.
Brenda Bouldin
Elementary School Teacher, South Carolina
Goal Setting is my go-to first Flocab lesson because growth mindset is my number one priority in prep for the challenges my students will encounter daily. I love all social and emotional learning topics, they are necessary to help fuel perseverance.
Melody McAllister
2nd Grade Teacher, Texas
Bullying
The lesson plan for the Bullying video is a great one to use in your BTS plans because it is not only informative but is also an easy one to incorporate collaboration and a sense of unity against bullying. Students could finish the lesson by working with a buddy or two to develop anti-bullying posters while incorporating things they had learned from the video and lesson.
Dustin Ecker
4th Grade Teacher, Indiana
Joining In and Including Others
I use the Joining In and Including Others lesson. On the first day of school, I typically use this video to reenforce the importance of being kind and allowing others to join in and play or simply letting others know when the next game is starting and they are able to join. With teaching first grade, lots of times feelings are hurt from not understanding why they can’t play at that moment.
Desiree Taylor
Elementary School Teacher, North Carolina
Review topics using video lessons and activities
Starting the year off by reviewing students’ summer reading will also bring a review of important ELA topics. Summarizing, inferencing, and character analysis are great lessons to incorporate in early instruction.
Last year, we utilized literary terms early on because the vocabulary lessons and cards were more engaging than what we had done in the past.
Renee Owens
8th Grade ELA Teacher, Pennsylvania
Incorporate current events with timely social studies lessons
Start your year by reviewing what happened in the news over the summer with our Summer Recap edition of the Week in Rap. If you’re teaching U.S. History, we have a lesson plan on the Age of Exploration, where many teachers start their year. Many of our Social Studies lesson plans are also incorporated into the new Month by Month section on the home page, so relevant and timely lessons will be easier to find.
With my History classes, we get started on current events right away and use the Week in Rap videos every Friday. I like to start the year with lessons from the Geography playlist so that students know basic geographical vocabulary.
Megan Forbes
Middle School Teacher, California
Build off of Flocab lessons to help supplement your curriculum
I find that the lesson plans are a great starting point when developing your individual plans. The lesson plans include a description of the lesson/video, objectives and standards covered, pacing and sequencing of the lessons, products students can create and a wrap up for the lesson. I use the Lesson Plans to get ideas, think about ways to use the Flocabulary resources within the pacing of the content I am teaching.
Danielle Marriaga
3rd Grade Teacher, Florida
Start using Flocabulary today!
As you gear up for the new school year, Flocabulary is here to help you create an engaging and authentic learning environment. From setting goals to addressing social-emotional learning and incorporating current events, the shared tips and lesson plans from fellow educators provide a wealth of ideas to enhance your instruction.