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.
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:
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:
Each week, we recognize stellar student work submitted to the The Week in Rap and The Week in Rap Junior Shout-Out Contests. For their Week in Rap Shout-Out, students in Mrs. Karen Chin’s 7th Grade Social Studies class at Jane Addams Jr. High in Schaumburg, IL flexed their poetic muscles to produce a plethora of poems dedicated to inanimate objects. Meanwhile, in Houma, Louisiana, Mrs. Parfait’s 4th grade Physical Education class at Acadian Elementary School claimed Week in Rap Jr. Shout-Out fame with a thoughtful entry on their Thanksgiving guests of choice. Read on to explore these excellent entries!
Last school year, Teacher-Librarian Heather Kindschy at Mt. Bethel Elementary in Marietta, GA wanted to expand on a songwriting history research project she’d led with students in the past. With a focus on project-based learning, the assignment would challenge students to work in groups to explore the stories of important historical figures from Reconstruction through the Great Depression using the Big6 Research Model. Students would then create their own music videos about these characters from history. And the project needed to be something students would get excited about. So using Flocabulary as inspiration, Heather created a hip-hop music video challenge, a project that had students eager to get to work – even during indoor recess and time before school! Here’s how she did it.
GarageBand + iPad!!??? by Joseph Thornton, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
