From nouns to verbs to research skills and argumentative essays, Flocabulary’s language arts units teach key concepts for all grades. Our standards-aligned hip-hop videos and supporting activities are uniquely engaging and student-centered. Flocabulary’s reading and writing instruction covers grammar, research and study skills, and literature too!
Teaching and writing poetry
Flocabulary is the perfect platform to support teaching and writing poetry in reading and writing instruction. Hip-hop is a form of art and each rap’s lyrics are like poetry. Teachers can bring poetry into every ELA lesson with Lyric Lab.
Lyric Lab is Flocabulary’s academic rhyme writing activity. After watching a video about a topic students can complete supporting activities to deepen their academic vocabulary exposure. The most comprehensive way for students to show what they know from a lessons vocabulary is with Lyric Lab where students use the vocabulary terms in any Flocabulary video and use them to write academic rhymes. Lyric Lab’s built in rhyme-generator makes this process easier. When finished with a 4 line (or longer) academic rhyme, students can set it to a beat and perform it as rap or just use it as academic poetry.
Teachers can use the Rhyme (grades K-2) and Rhyme & Rhythm (grades 3-12) and Hip-hop Fundamentals lessons to support poetry writing in the classroom.
Assign grammar videos as independent work
You may find that students are consistently making the same grammatical errors in their writing. Perhaps some have difficulties with prepositions, and others need to better understand commas. Assign Flocabulary grammar videos after writing to help meet students where they’re at and master grammar usage.
Make writing engaging
We know writing can be hard to teach in any grade level or subject area. There are lots of reasons students avoid writing. It could be they feel overwhelmed by writing since it’s an abstract task, they struggle organizing their thoughts, the writing process takes too long, they struggle with poor reading and spelling skills which makes writing even more difficult.
Throughout these struggles, it can be difficult to keep students engaged. We know that student choice and topics students can relate to keep academics engaging. Before students can sit down to write anything they need to understand the vocabulary of a topic.
With Flocabulary, students can master academic vocabulary in any K-12 core subject area through a variety of activities with varying levels of complexity. Flocabulary’s focus on connecting school to student culture gives students topics they can relate to. Flocabulary’s lessons are culturally relevant and applicable to real life. This can jumpstart writing engagement in the classroom.
For any writing topic, start with Flocabulary to spark interest and creativity, give student choice and agency over the activities and ways they master vocabulary related to a topic. Use Flocabulary writing lessons to support writing strategies or have students use Lyric Lab for creative writing opportunities.
Here are a few videos we love to support writing instruction:
Focus on non-fiction and informational texts
We know teachers are always looking for more ways to bring informational texts into the classroom. Every Flocabulary K-12 standards-aligned lesson includes a Read & Respond activity to practice reading comprehension. This activity gives students an informational text passage and asks them to respond to questions about that passage to show what they know about the vocabulary and concepts in each lesson. Teachers can also use the Fiction vs. Nonfiction video to teach informational and nonfiction texts and how they’re different from fiction.
Check out a language arts lesson to dive deeper into reading and writing instruction with Flocabulary today!
