Flocabulary Offers Free 90 Day Trial

Flocabulary is one of the tools we are using at Blue Star Elementary to engage students in boosting their academic vocabulary. It combines catchy hip hop music videos with all kinds of concepts from parts to speech to the Solar System to habits for being safe online.

The company is currently hosting a free 90 day trial for teachers. That is a great way to get through the rest of the Winter doldrums while infusing a little funk and fun into your pedagogy.

Check out the trial and then check out this sample of Flocabulary's take on order of operations.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zanq7gmXY88[/embed]

Use Google Slides as an online Academic Vocabulary Notebook

In Hamilton, part of our district and building improvement process includes increasing student academic vocabulary capacity.

John Marzano has laid out six steps for teachers to follow when introducing new content-specific words.

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="694"] Marzano's six steps  - fhsdvocabulary.pbworks.com[/caption]

In my elementary technology classes, third and fourth graders are performing step 4 now in Google Drive with a digital notebook.  All I did was adapt one of Marzano's notebook templates and created it in Google Slides. I made the deck public and kids created their own copies and shared them with me.

Kids write the definition in their own words, they rate their understanding of the word, and also find a non-linguistic representation of the word. The template I created makes it really easy for the kids to add and record their knowledge of the words.

Doing it this way takes advantage of all of the benefits of Google documents like ubiquitous access and sharing.

Find and create a copy of the slide deck here.  Feel free to use it and share it.

[caption id="attachment_801" align="alignleft" width="866"] Academic Vocabulary Template[/caption]

 

Thanks Flocabulary!

This year in Hamilton, building students' academic vocabulary has been a primary focus.

Thanks to everyone at Flocabulary.com for your fabulous videos that have made learning so much fun. Here is a little remix of Double Trouble to show you just how much fun kids at Blue Star Elementary had rocking out during lunchtime.