Website Review: Flocabulary.com - Ways to use Hip Hop in the classroom.

Here’s a web site you’ll like which uses hip-hop in the classroom. You may have come across it in your search for new material. If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. www. Flocabulary.com is a knockout..

It can be used to motivate, teach an entire lesson or summarize one previously taught. It can also help understanding. In Hip Hop reading closely is necessary for rhyming—and as well as a tool to improve vocabulary. But best of all, you’re on your way to creating a happy better managed classroom.

Students may work alone or together in groups. Competition between or within groups might be another energizing activity. What you’re doing is cashing in on the built-in energy of kids in your class. There’s a good reason why American Idol and Dancing with the Stars are hits, commanding huge audiences.

I like the idea of using hip-hop in a lesson, but was really sold when I looked at the videos and sample songs. They are dynamite. For example, a lesson on the five elements of a short story: character, conflict, climax, theme and setting uses lyrics with a hip-hop beat. At the end of each stanza, the five elements are repeated so the kids won’t forget.

The nail biting video of The Pit and the Pendulum which follows accompanied by a rap of Poe’s suspenseful story, should hold your class’s interest. The Pit and the Pendulum can easily be combined with Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, which doesn’t have a rap so that the kids can create one themselves.

In my experience, the five elements of a plot can be reinforced by using current or recently popular movies as a follow-up. Start with plotless one character movie; for example, you might say: A few months ago I saw a movie in which the main character did nothing but sleep throughout the entire performance. The character snored, turned over, stretched, etc. The camera panned the sleeping figure, moving in and out, but nothing happened.

Then, ask the class if any of them have seen it? (Questions will follow such as: “Why bother? What a bore .”)Ask them what they would do to make it more exciting without awakening the main character? The idea is to encourage the class to create a storyline using the five elements of a plot. Then draw the storyline in a line on the blackboard, demonstrating the highest point of the conflict. The plot also works with the addition of other characters.

The Flocabulary web site sells a Writing Academic rhymes Package which includes “everything needed for students to write, perform, and record their own Flocabulary style raps. “

For other ways to use this toe-tapping plus motivator; click onto the Flocabulary web site and look at the videos, songs, and text. Have fun.