How to use Flocabulary for differentiated learning
As a teacher of students with varied strengths, needs, and preferences, you know that one size doesn’t fit all. Differentiated learning is a teaching approach that tailors instruction to meet the needs and preferences of all learners. While the learning goal remains the same for all students, the instructional approach is varied based on students’ strengths, struggles, and interests. Rather than trying to teach the whole group in the same way, differentiated learning acknowledges that students are different, and therefore may learn best differently.
Can Flocabulary support differentiated learning?
Absolutely! Flocabulary, a multi-modal learning tool with built-in opportunities for scaffolding, demonstrating understanding, and offering student choice, supports differentiation in four key areas: content, process, product, and learning environment. These areas, identified by differentiation expert Carol Ann Tomlinson, are essential for effective classroom instruction. Keep reading to discover how Flocabulary can enhance your differentiated teaching strategies!
New to Flocabulary? Teachers can sign up for a trial to access our lesson videos and assessment activities. Administrators can get in touch with us to learn more about unlocking the full power of Flocabulary through Flocabulary Plus.
How to use Flocabulary for differentiated learning
1. Content
Flocabulary videos
Flocabulary supports teachers in differentiating content, or adapting what students need to learn or how they will access the information. Flocabulary’s engaging videos, both hip-hop and narrated, present information both visually and auditorily, supporting different learning styles. Music’s rhyme and rhythm often help students better retain information, and hip-hop uniquely promotes retention through its use of vocabulary repetition and musical mnemonic devices. We’ve heard from teachers that they see students mouthing the lyrics to Flocabulary songs to help them recall information and strategies during assessments. Using Flocabulary lessons during your whole-group instruction or offering Flocabulary as a tool during stations or student choice time are excellent ways to differentiate how content is delivered.
Word Up
Within Flocabulary, teachers also have many opportunities to differentiate content based on students’ skill levels or interests. Teachers with Flocabulary Plus can assign different lessons and activities within lessons to individual students, which makes it easy to tailor assignments to students’ skill levels or preferences. Our Word Up Vocabulary lessons, which teach general academic vocabulary words, are divided into eight levels. Use our diagnostic test to determine which level is best for each student and the pre-and post-assessments for each level to measure vocabulary growth. Richmond Public Schools used Flocabulary to strengthen vocabulary across the curriculum and saw significant improvement in their Standards of Learning (SOL) test after implementing Word Up, including the diagnostic and pre-and post-tests to gather insights.
Flocabulary Mix
Flocabulary Mix is a feature that guides students through close viewing and analysis of a Flocabulary video and also provides an opportunity for content differentiation. Teachers pair together a short video instructing on a key comprehension skill, such as making inferences or determining the author’s purpose, with a video text, a hip-hop video made to be analyzed using these skills. Skill videos are each targeted at a specific grade level and increase in complexity as students progress. Teachers with Flocabulary Plus can differentiate by assigning the Skill videos appropriate for a student’s readiness, whether above or below grade level.
Video texts cover fiction and nonfiction topics ranging from science and social studies to original and existing fiction, art, technology, and music. Skill videos can be paired together with multiple Video Texts, so teachers can use Video Texts to differentiate learning based on student interest. Perhaps one student would like to learn about the author’s word choice through the lens of an informational lesson about Filipino labor organizer Larry Itliong, while another would enjoy using Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus.” The targeted Skill videos and diverse, engaging Video Texts in Flocabulary Mix make it ripe for differentiating to meet students’ needs and cater to their interests.
Nearpod Originals
Nearpod Originals lessons are another great way to provide students with content that best serves how they learn. Nearpod Originals is a type of video-based lesson in Flocabulary built on research-based pedagogy that covers topics across all subjects and grades K-12. Instead of using hip-hop to make learning relevant, accessible, and memorable, as our traditional Flocabulary videos do, Nearpod Originals feature relatable hosts, humor, and storytelling. Nearpod Originals lessons contain the same lesson activities as traditional Flocabulary lessons with a video that delivers information differently. All Nearpod Originals lessons have a traditional Flocabulary companion lesson, making it easy to differentiate by assigning the Nearpod Originals and Flocabulary lessons to different groups of students. Teachers with Flocabulary Plus can assign the Flocabulary lesson to students who learn best through music and assign the Nearpod Originals lesson to those who would benefit from a hosted direct instruction video. Or, assign both lessons to individual students who could use extra explanation and practice with the topic.
2. Process
Individualized assignments
The differentiation process means differentiating the activities students do to make sense of what they are learning. With our individual assignments feature, teachers can assign different activities in the lesson sequence to different students, tailored to how they best learn. For example, Flocabulary’s Vocab Cards are designed based on the Frayer Model and enable students to show their understanding and build connections to vocabulary words. Some students may enjoy working on Vocab Cards, while others may prefer the multiple-choice Vocab Game, in which students build a hip-hop beat while answering vocabulary questions. Performance data from both the Vocab Cards and Vocab Game power Flocabulary Plus teachers’ Vocab Analytics dashboard, where they can track students’ word proficiency. Additionally, teachers can reassign activities such as the Vocab Game, Read & Respond, and Quiz for retake, giving students more opportunities to succeed with the material.
Lyric Lab
In Flocabulary’s Lyric Lab, students write their own rhymes about the topic. Teachers often like to assign Lyric Lab for each lesson to early finishers to extend their learning. Lyric Lab includes scaffolded steps to guide students through writing four lines using the vocabulary words, as well as a rhyme generator, making it accessible to even beginning writers, which can support differentiated learning.
Vocab Analytics
With our Vocab Analytics dashboard, teachers with Flocabulary Plus can track student vocabulary progress and quickly generate personalized Vocab Practice assignments targeted to a specific student and subject. From their dashboard, teachers can view each student’s vocabulary proficiency across all subjects, as well as within each subject. They can pinpoint where students are struggling and assign them a personalized practice set, which will include study materials and questions on their specific low-proficiency words.
Immersive Reader
When exploring how to differentiate lessons, it’s important to provide learners with appropriate scaffolding for the content. Flocabulary includes multiple scaffolds offering support to students of varying skills and abilities. Teachers with Flocabulary Plus can enable our integration with Microsoft’s Immersive Reader for individual students to provide features like text-to-speech, text translation into 50+ languages, and a picture dictionary.
Adjust video speed
Students can also slow down the video to increase the time they have to process the information. This serves as a helpful tool for differentiated learning in the classroom.
3. Product
When teachers differentiate a project or product, they vary how students can show what they’ve learned. Flocabulary’s Lyric Lab, which guides students to write their own poem or rap about the topic, is an engaging creative option for students to express their learning. The Flocabulary lesson sequence is designed to move students up the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Lyric Lab sits at the top in “Creating.” Students must thoroughly grasp the content, skills, and key vocabulary in order to write their own piece about it! Many teachers assign Lyric Lab as a final project and invite students to perform their rhymes in front of the class using Lyric Lab’s beat player. You can further differentiate by making Lyric Lab a group project and having students work together to create a rap as an end-of-unit project.
4. Learning environments
The last area for differentiation that Tomlinson describes is the learning environment or the way the classroom feels and how students work together. This includes providing materials that reflect the cultures and diversity of the students in the class. Flocabulary differentiates the learning environment by authentically engaging students and helping create a culturally responsive classroom, honoring students’ individual experiences, and fostering personal connections through music, storytelling, and humor. As educator Zaretta Hammond explains, these connections are necessary for learning to occur. Flocabulary lessons are diverse, equitable, and inclusive, and they include the crucial representation that allows students to see themselves reflected in the content while learning about cultures and identities different from their own. Flocabulary videos also honor youth culture by teaching with and through the culture of hip-hop. Created and performed by professional hip-hop artists, our videos help create a classroom environment that respects and elevates students’ interests and experiences.
Start using Flocabulary for differentiation
A differentiated classroom is one in which students’ individual strengths, needs, and preferences are addressed and nurtured. Flocabulary is well suited to support you in differentiating learning in your classroom in the areas of content, process, product, and learning environment. From our leveled vocabulary lessons to our text-to-speech integration to our creative, interactive end-of-unit projects, Flocabulary can help teachers serve individual student needs while engaging the whole class. Flocabulary lessons provide an engaging, multimodal addition to your curriculum that creates the emotional connections necessary for learning and differentiates your classroom environment, creating a joyful and inclusive space for learning.
New to Flocabulary? Teachers can sign up for a trial to access our lesson videos and assessment activities. Administrators can get in touch with us to learn more about unlocking the full power of Flocabulary through Flocabulary Plus.