Lesson Plan

How To Talk To Your Students About Fake News

How to Talk to Your Students About Fake News

Our students are growing up in a time where even traditional media sources can publish stories without definitively verifying the information. And once something is online, viewed and shared, it’s hard to rescind. The sharing of fabricated or murky stories is amplified by everyone with a social media account and the ability to publish. Many people are willing to publish outlandish news and images in an attempt to try to go viral. This happens frequently during natural disasters; for example the same shark has been spotted swimming down the freeway of every recent flood. So by this point, we should…

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Flocabulary Fridays, Word Up Baseball And More

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! ------------------------- "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…

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Lesson Plan: Writing Academic Raps

Lesson Plan: Writing Academic Raps

* How To Write Vocabulary Rhymes * Many students say that memorizing vocabulary words is a struggle, so we designed a simple lesson plan to help students learn, master and retain difficult vocabulary by writing a rhyme. This exercise can be done while a beat is playing (free beats are available here) or without music. Step 1. Choose Your Vocab Word and Pre-teach In this case, let’s use the word vain – an SAT-level vocabulary word that students might have to grapple with as early as middle school. A.    Teach the word and the definition: Vain (adj.) too proud, into…

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Hip Hop Across The Curriculum

Hip Hop Across the Curriculum

Hip-Hop is not just a genre of music, nor is it simply a pop fad. It is a three decade-old and growing, holistic cultural movement. What began as the popular culmination of the African-American musico-social experience quickly spread to every corner and demographic of the United States and beyond. Today, Hip-Hop exists as a dominant expression of the modern American youth experience. Accordingly, Hip-Hop can be used in a powerful and relevant way in classrooms across the academic curriculum. Not only does Hip-Hop engage students because of its inherent resonance with their lives, it can also serve as a case…

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The Poetics Of Hip-Hop Lesson Plan

The Poetics of Hip-Hop Lesson Plan

This comprehensive high school lesson plan, from the Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge program, helps student make connections between poetry (Giovanni, Saul Williams) Rap lyrics (Blackalicious) and Shakespeare. The parallels are excellent and this is a great example of how teachers can use rap as a mirror for poetry. For more lesson plans, check out Flocabulary's Teacher Resources. You can also hear this idea in action with Flocabulary's literature raps.

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