I Have a Blog?? And Flocabulary... A Treasure Trove!

Well, I have completely neglected this little blog of mine for so very long, but I must say that this year has been quite an adjustment and blogging has taken the absolute back seat. Without making a list of excuses, I'll just get to the good stuff. :)

You may already know about this resource and if you do, hooray! A teammate introduced this website to me and it has become an integral part of our classroom.

Introducing Flocabulary!

Obviously the picture above is from their website, but it does a great job of giving an overview.

This website is seriously a treasure trove. At first I was skeptical because I really didn't think the words 'educational' and 'hip-hop' could possibly lead to a good thing. But I must say, the kids truly enjoy it and look forward to our "Wild About Words" Wednesdays when we listen to the raps. I have been impressed with the quality of the lyrics and their ability to embed reliable context clues. I wish I would have found this resource much sooner!

Basically, the idea of Flocabulary is to take key terms and ideas from various units of study and embed them in a storyline set to music to create an engaging rap. We use the vocabulary units for third grade which divides the most commonly seen vocabulary words in third-grade-leveled text over a series of fourteen units.

As you can see from the picture above, each unit has its own video and rap. The kids love the songs and they are stuck in their heads days after we listen to them. The kids are also recognizing the words in their own books and remembering the meanings of the words.

 When I first started using Flocabulary, I didn't realize the great resources that are available to accompany each unit's rap. The picture below shows some of the options available.

Each unit comes with printable song lyrics, a section with definitions and examples of the words from the unit, synonym practice, fill in the blank sentences, a connections section where sentences that allude to certain words are given (I love this part!) and a multiple choice section where student apply the word meanings. The greatest part is that each unit also comes with a reading passage that embeds the words from the unit and has comprehension questions. Score!  A quiz for each unit is also available as well as additional lesson resources that accompany the concepts introduced in the unit. I know! I told you- treasure trove!

Even though I have only explored and used the vocabulary section of Flocabulary, I am sure the other sections are fabulous as well. They have raps for almost all subject areas grades K-12.

For such a great resource, it only costs $96 for a year subscription or $12 monthly! This is a steal, people! Seriously! If your school won't purchase a subscription for you it is definitely worth your money!

This is a resource that I will be utilizing from day one next year.

Do you have any great resources for vocabulary? If so, I would love to hear about them!