Flocabulary

Since (teaching) life has come to a screeching, soggy halt due to Hurricane Sandy, I thought I would take some time today to get back on the blog-wagon. I hope this finds you warm, dry, and safe - and Godspeed to those of you who are in (or have survived) harm's way with this storm!

One of my students' favorite things to do this year is to listen and learn from songs and music videos from Flocabulary. Flocabulary is basically rap music for the classroom. It's clean, fun, and totally catchy. I love it. Here's the other catch - it's not free. I know, "Boooooo" - but understandable. They've got a product to sell, and fortunately, they do post free videos and songs to use in your classroom. Whenever I use a Flocabulary song to back up what I'm teaching, my students remember it and what it's about. They still can tell you the order of classification for living things from listening to "Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach." Two of the freebies right now are "I'll Be The President" on the presidential election process and "Check and Balances" for the three branches of government. Sometimes the resources are just the song, and other times they include a music video. Lyrics are on the same page, so the students can sing along (and they will...loudly and over and over again). There are also review questions and lesson plans for each song as well.

Many of the songs on the Flocabulary website are also available on iTunes for $0.99 each. You can also purchase full albums of their music such as "Math Rap" and "Beats, Rhymes, and Science." I'm pretty sure that, with the exception of the language arts songs, most of it is available on iTunes. There are also student guides (with the lyrics and vocabulary activities) and accompanying CDs of music available for purchase on the Flocabulary site if you are interested. I downloaded the songs on iTunes I thought would help my students the most and made playlists on my iPads and iPod for them to listen to as a station and in their spare time.

I've taken a while to post about Flocabulary, not just because life happens but I have been completely bummed about the fact that you now have to pay for the Week in Rap. It use to be that you could subscribe to the Week in Rap and each Friday they would e-mail you the video for the current events of the week - set to song. However, that is no longer the case and I'm not going to pay $5 a month for it. There are pricing plans for teachers on the Flocabulary website and you can test drive it with a free trial, but you'll have to check it out a decide for yourself.

http://flocabulary.com/