Product Overview: Flocabulary
Flocabulary is an innovative educational platform designed to enhance student learning through a unique blend of music, reading passages, and interactive exercises. Here’s a detailed look at what the product does and its key features and functionality.
What Flocabulary Does
Flocabulary aims to create a multisensory learning environment that increases student engagement, retention, and comprehension of academic content. By leveraging the power of hip-hop music, Flocabulary makes learning more enjoyable and effective, particularly for diverse student populations, including ESL and Special Ed students.
Key Features and Functionality
Multisensory Learning
Flocabulary combines hip-hop songs, reading passages, and various exercises to engage students on multiple levels. The use of music and rhyming text enhances the acquisition and retention of academic content, making it especially beneficial for students who respond well to auditory and visual learning.
Student Engagement and Cultural Relevancy
The platform uses high-interest hip-hop songs that appeal to students’ interests, fostering emotional engagement and a positive connection with the content. This approach helps students recognize their capabilities and develop positive identities, which in turn, motivates them to become high achievers.
Applied Learning and Higher-Order Thinking
Flocabulary’s lessons culminate in rhyme-writing exercises where students analyze and synthesize the content they have learned into Flocabulary-style raps. This activity promotes higher-order thinking by turning students into content creators rather than just consumers.
Multiple Exposures
Flocabulary ensures that students encounter key concepts and vocabulary through multiple exposures, typically between eight and ten varied interactions. This approach aligns with research recommendations that a rich, engaging first exposure to information is crucial for effective learning.
Differentiated Learning
The platform supports differentiated learning by allowing teachers to tailor content, process, product, and learning environments to meet individual students’ needs. Features like Flocabulary Plus enable teachers to assign different lessons and activities based on students’ skill levels or interests. Tools such as the Word Up Vocabulary lessons, Flocabulary Mix, and Vocab Analytics help in personalizing vocabulary practice and tracking student progress.
Lesson Sequence
Each Flocabulary video is part of a carefully designed lesson sequence that includes:
- Vocab Cards: Provide definitions, parts of speech, example sentences, images, synonyms, and antonyms for key vocabulary terms.
- Read & Respond: Reading passages that require close reading, inference-making, and analysis of the author’s perspective.
- Vocab Game: Interactive games that reinforce vocabulary understanding.
- Quizzes: Multiple-choice questions that can be read aloud in the student’s native language using the Immersive Reader feature.
Interactive Tools
- Lyric Lab: Allows students to write their own rhymes using vocabulary words, with scaffolded steps and a rhyme generator to support beginning writers.
- Flocabulary Mix: Combines short videos on key comprehension skills with video texts, enabling teachers to differentiate learning based on student interest and readiness.
- Immersive Reader: Integrates with Microsoft’s Immersive Reader to provide text-to-speech, text translation into over 50 languages, and a picture dictionary.
- Adjustable Video Speed: Students can slow down videos to increase processing time, a useful tool for differentiated learning.
Content Library
Flocabulary boasts a library of over 1,300 standards-aligned hip-hop videos and lesson activities, covering major subject areas such as language arts, math, science, social studies, life skills, vocabulary, and current events. These videos are created through a rigorous process involving research, curriculum writing, and review to ensure they are both engaging and rigorous.
In summary, Flocabulary is a comprehensive educational tool that leverages music, interactive exercises, and personalized learning to enhance student engagement, retention, and academic achievement. Its features are designed to support diverse learning needs and promote a deeper understanding of academic content.