Product Update: Discuss Mode is here!
We’re excited to announce a new teaching tool, Discuss Mode, which launched with our April 15 Week in Rap video last Friday.
Updates to Flocabulary’s Unit Page
If you’ve used Flocabulary over the past couple of days, you may have noticed something different about its appearance. We recently launched a new design for our unit page to improve navigation and your overall experience using Flocabulary.
Our corresponding activities, which once lived perched atop our videos, have migrated to the left-hand side—it’s the same great Flocab content you’ve grown to love, just in a new location.
Sign in to Flocabulary with Google!
Are you a Flocab fan and Google geek? We got you, tech lovers. Teachers and students on school or district subscriptions can now sign in to Flocabulary with their Google accounts!
Signing in with a Google account means you and your students don’t need to remember another username and password. Instead, you can use the credentials you’re already using for apps like Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Calendar.
Writing Rhymes for Test Prep: A Spotlight on ESL Teacher Leah Simpson
When working with an ESL population, one of teacher Leah Simpson’s goals is to help students prepare for the WIDA test, an English language proficiency exam used by a number of states across the country, including her home state of Tennessee. The Warren County High School Teacher, based in McMinnville, TN, uses our Word Up Blue and The Week in Rap to help students practice Tier 2 vocabulary and bring nonfiction text into her classroom.
As part of their test preparation, students also need practice with academic vocabulary across subjects. How did Leah decide to boost subject-specific vocab with her class this year? With rhyme-writing, of course! Each of Leah’s five class periods picked a subject—math, science, social students, ELA or social/instructional language—and worked over the course of a month to compose a rap as a group. Students performed their raps for their families at Warren County High School’s ESL Family Night this fall to much celebration. Here’s what Leah told us about the experience:
Five Pedagogical Reasons to Add Writing Rap to Your Lesson
Do you wish you could make writing more exciting? (Yes, we meant that to rhyme). We all know that writing is not only critically important for academic development and achievement, but is a key tool through which we can deepen our learning, communicate with others, express ourselves and be creative. But students may not always see writing as a wellspring of opportunity: a study from 2006 found that only 8% of students said they enjoy writing (HSSE, 2006).
Crafting writing exercises and assignments that resonate with students, boost engagement and support the curriculum is a challenge, then—but a solvable one. At Flocabulary, a favorite student-centered writing exercise to incorporate in lessons is, naturally, rhyme-writing! It’s as engaging as it is educational, and you don’t need to be a professional rapper to do it—check out our Writing Academic Rhymes resources here. Here are five ways that bringing rhyme-writing into your lesson has pedagogical benefit:
