How Flocabulary supports the Science of Reading
Let’s start with the Science of Reading 101: What is it? The Science of Reading (SoR) doesn’t refer to a specific curriculum or single teaching method but rather an interdisciplinary approach to teaching reading based on research and evidence. It focuses on building foundational skills to help students learn how to read and succeed at school and in life. The Science of Reading is grounded in reading research that highlights the importance of explicit instruction in foundational reading skills.
The theoretical basis is sound, but translating theory into daily practice can be complicated. With Flocabulary, teachers can access lessons and activities that support their instruction and fit the Science of Reading-aligned practices.
Does Flocabulary support the Science of Reading?
Absolutely! Flocabulary has rigorous video-based lessons and interactive activities that effectively support the SoR in the classroom. Flocabulary creates a memorable and impactful learning experience by combining music, rhythm, and visuals.
Videos and their corresponding activities, including games, quizzes, and printables, provide multiple opportunities for students to practice foundational and knowledge-based reading skills and improve their overall reading ability. The platform’s instructional guides also ensure that all students, including those with learning differences and English Language Learners, can benefit from its resources. Flocabulary supports key principles from the SoR by offering a thorough approach to improving comprehension and reading and supporting academic success across the curriculum.
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 Flocabulary supports the Science of Reading
Word recognition
Flocabulary supports word recognition by using engaging, rhythmic content to build phonological awareness and fluency while keeping students engaged and excited through structured literacy practices.
Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, such as rhymes, syllables, and individual phonemes. This skill is crucial for learning to read because it helps students understand how letters and sounds come together to form words.
Flocabulary helps build phonological awareness by using catchy lyrics and engaging videos emphasizing words’ sounds. As students sing along, they become more attuned to the different sounds and patterns in language.
Corresponding Flocabulary activities in a lesson sequence provide additional opportunities for students to practice identifying and working with different sounds in a variety of contexts, further strengthening their phonological awareness. This fun and interactive approach aligns with the SoR basics, which promote the importance of phonological awareness as a foundational skill for reading success. By incorporating Flocabulary into their lessons, teachers can help students develop this essential skill enjoyably and memorably. Combining these activities into a small group lesson plan also provides targeted instruction that helps students develop essential phonological skills.
Here’s an example of one of many vocab-rich videos on Flocabulary!
Fluency
Fluency plays a critical role in bridging word recognition and comprehension. For example, using a decodable book during a guided reading session can help students practice reading accurately and fluently. Take that one step further with Flocabulary’s video-based lessons, which can help improve reading fluency by encouraging students to read aloud in the classroom. The catchy beats and storytelling increase active participation and inspire students to practice reading the lyrics aloud by rapping along with the artist. This helps them become more comfortable with reading and enhances their pronunciation, intonation, and overall fluency.
The videos also promote interaction with the lyrics of the songs. Students can read along with the music, highlight words, and complete a cloze passage. This interactive approach helps students to better understand the rhythm and flow of language, making it easier for them to read aloud with confidence and expression. To boost fluency, try using reading groups to practice reading aloud, focusing on strategies that strengthen phonemic awareness, such as breaking down words into individual sounds before reading them as a whole.
Additionally, Flocabulary’s Lyric Lab feature enables students to interact with the lyrics of the songs by highlighting words and creating their own rhymes. Lyric Lab even has beats that students can play in the background of their rhymes, allowing them to practice fluency by creating their own original work.
Language comprehension
Flocabulary’s emphasis on language comprehension distinguishes it from other educational resources. It supports the Science of Reading with comprehension instruction, teaching language comprehension skills so students understand what words mean. This includes teaching students about phonics and decoding, context and background knowledge, and vocabulary. These techniques, combined with intentional reading comprehension strategy instruction, ensure students can connect decoding skills to understanding the meaning of the text.
Phonics and decoding
Much of the SoR materials and practices focus on word recognition—specifically phonics instruction—and decoding. Teaching phonics skills is the relationship between letters and sounds, enabling students to sound out words.
For instance, consider the term “Berlin Wall.” A basic understanding of letters and their sound correspondences would enable a child to decode these two words. However, phonics and decoding alone do not guarantee a true understanding of the term, its historical context, or the symbolic and ideological divide of the Berlin Wall.
Understanding letter-sound correspondence through phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition is crucial for reading but insufficient for proper text comprehension. Students need to understand the context in which those terms are used to grasp terms fully.
Context and background knowledge
Providing context in vocabulary lessons and building students’ background knowledge about a topic enables them to connect new information with what they already know, making it easier to understand and retain new concepts.
Flocabulary’s video lessons introduce students to a wide range of topics, from historical events to scientific concepts. Along with support from accompanying activities, these lessons ensure that students acquire the foundational knowledge to comprehend vocabulary in their core subject areas.
By providing students with the necessary context and background information, Flocabulary helps them develop a deeper understanding of the material, enhancing their reading comprehension skills. This approach ensures that students are better equipped to navigate and understand complex texts, ultimately fostering a deeper and more nuanced comprehension of the material that goes far beyond the basics of word recognition.
Vocabulary
Key to the Science of Reading is vocabulary instruction. Without a strong vocabulary, students may struggle to understand the meaning of what they read, even if they can decode the words. Flocabulary offers a dynamic and engaging approach to vocabulary instruction that supports Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary acquisition.
Flocabulary’s video-based lessons build academic vocabulary at every level of Bloom’s Taxonomy, providing students with multiple exposures to academic and subject-specific vocabulary throughout the lesson sequence. This, along with multiple practice opportunities, helps students understand the connections between words and their meanings. For example, the Vocab Cards feature enables students to learn word meanings by writing and drawing key words from the lesson. Every time a student creatively engages with a new word, they are strengthening the neural pathways that lead to long-term understanding.
The Vocab Game tests word knowledge and challenges students to use words to express understanding. As they correctly complete each question, they build a musical beat. Each new sound is a motivation to get a correct answer. Additionally, the Read & Respond activity encourages students to use new vocabulary words to ask and answer text-dependent questions. And, the Lyric Lab offers a fun way for students to practice using unfamiliar words by creating new rhymes about the content.
Verbal reasoning and literary knowledge
The SoR also involves teaching idioms and grammar to build an understanding of language structure, as well as print concepts and genre studies for literary knowledge. Fortunately, the Flocabulary lesson library is vast, and at each grade level, teachers can find English Language Arts (ELA) lesson plans that are relevant and exciting. Teachers will find Subject-Verb Agreement, Genres of Fiction, and Figurative Language lessons that support your Science of Reading lesson plans and comprehension instruction.
Start using Flocabulary to support the Science of Reading instruction
Regarding effective literacy and vocabulary instruction, the Science of Reading has changed the game. But bringing these principles to life in the classroom can be tough without the right tools.
By incorporating Flocabulary into the classroom, teachers can transform their reading curriculum by providing the necessary tools and resources to support their student’s development of essential reading skills, ensuring they are prepared to succeed in school and beyond.
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.
