Flocabulary Fridays, Word Up Baseball and more

Shelby Oates from Summerour Middle School (just outside of Atlanta, GA) is an educator with a never-ending supply of tricks up her sleeve – to motivate students, engage them in learning, and help them achieve to their highest potential. Check out some ideas she recently submitted for use with Flocabulary’s Word Up Project program!

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“I have begun to use the program!  My kids were excited just from the mention of the name!  We have deemed our Friday’s, “Flocabulary Friday” and though sometimes we have to miss a week due to other deadlines, it has become such a reward for the students;-)  They even have started to say “WORD UP” when taking attendance on our “Flocabulary Fridays”, and they are publishing a magazine soon where the first 15 words from the program must be used throughout.

“We spent a couple of weeks on the first rap, Bottom of the Ninth to ensure retention of the words as they slipped up a little when we assessed them; but that’s what I love about the program, it is so flexible!  We even played Word Up Baseball in Flocabulary Field!! We set up the room like a baseball diamond and named if Flocabulary Field.  The students used the sentence mix up activity with Bottom of the Ninth and on home plate was the incorrect word on a large piece of paper for whatever sentence we were on.  The opposite team had the other 14 words written on large pieces of paper and those were their “gloves” and the batter had to hit a baseball (a rolled up papertowel hit with a yard stick;-) into the field and had to do his/her best to hit or come close to the correct word in the field.  We figured out equivalents to 3 strikes, walks and different base hits/home runs/grand slams, but it forced each team to know what the correct word is so they could either play defense in the field and block the correct word so it wasn’t hit, or to hit the baseball in the right direction.  IT WAS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!!!

I am ready to study Mime in a Box next and this is really just a preview of next year for me as a teacher, because EVERY Friday next year will be “Flocabulary Friday” and I can’t wait to think of great games to play with the sentence mix ups……I think charades will be the next challenge to do our best to mime out the meanings;-)