What do you do when the UN calls and asks you to write and perform a rap song for hundreds of students, distinguished Nobel laureates, and celebs like Stevie Wonder, Leo DiCaprio and Michael Douglas? Well at Flocabulary, we go forth and rap!
You asked, we listened! Flocabulary now aligns with all state standards.
Many educators have shared a need to see how our content aligns with their state’s specific standards. How will your favorite Flocabulary unit help your students with standardized tests? Need specifics on standards alignment to share with your district administrators? With Flocabulary’s new standards alignment search tool, teachers and administrators can easily view this information with a few clicks on our user-friendly site.
Ready to see it for yourself? Access the standards search tool here. Please note that, by default, this link takes you directly to the “All Standards” tab. For specifics on ELA CCSS and Math CCSS, click on the tabs to the right.
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:
A major challenge for any teacher is knowing how to present news to students about tragic events in the world, including acts of terrorism and hate crimes. Many students are exposed to these news stories along with the rest of us, and they’ll likely have fears, concerns and questions about the event and what it means.
What’s the best way to foster a healthy, safe and supportive environment for students to discuss and process tragedy? We asked three experts in the field of child psychology and mental health who we work with to help answer this question, and we conclude with our suggestions for using art for expression in the classroom.
Flocabulary has a natural fondness for organizations with funny names. So when we heard about NaNoWriMo we were intrigued. Turns out, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's an organization that gets people to write an entire novel in the month of November. In 2015, more than 430,000 participants embarked on a November noveling quest, including children writing novels in their schools with NaNoWrimo's Young Writer's Program!
