Flocabulary
Vocabulary is essential in a child's education - regardless of the discipline area. A recent review of the current research on vocabulary instruction was conducted by the National Reading Technical Assistance Center, RMC Research Corporation. One key item that that found was, "The National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) identified vocabulary as one of five major components of reading. Its importance to overall school success and more specifically to reading comprehension is widely documented (Baker, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998; Anderson & Nagy, 1991). The National Reading Panel (NRP) stated that vocabulary plays an important role both in learning to read and in comprehending text: readers cannot understand text without knowing what most of the words mean. “Teaching vocabulary will not guarantee success in reading, just as learning to read words will not guarantee success in reading. However, lacking either adequate word identification skills or adequate vocabulary will ensure failure” (Biemiller, 2005)".
One great resource that we have in 6th grade reading, is Flocabulary. Flocabulary is an online library of educational hip-hop songs and videos for grades K-12. It allows teachers to incorporate explicit vocabulary instruction into the curriculum in a way that is exciting and engaging for students.
Each week, beginning in October, students will be presented with 15 challenging vocabulary words. Typically these words will be introduced on our Flocab Fridays! Typically this is what we will do in the week ahead to prepare for their assessment on these word:
Friday - students are introduced to the terms and we watch our new Flocabulary video for the week. Students are then assigned to complete flashcards over the weekend to help them study. Research shows the actual act of writing words and their definitions helps transfer this information to long-term memory more efficiently.
Monday - we watch the video after we complete the Fix the Mistake exercise in their Flocabulary packet. Students should spend a few minutes either using their flashcards or Quizlet Link that night.
Tuesday - we watch the video after we complete the Pick the Winner & Draw the Relationship exercises in their Flocabulary packet. Students should spend a few minutes either using their flashcards or Quizlet Link that night.
Wednesday - we watch the video after we complete the Thinking Creatively exercise in their Flocabulary packet. Students should spend a few minutes either using their flashcards or Quizlet Link that night - quiz will be the next day.
Thursday - we take our Flocabulary quiz. This quiz is done on-line through a Google Form. This gives students immediate feedback on their performance/grade. It also allows me to gain valuable insight on all of my classes and how they performed. Since you may not be able to go back and see the actual assessment since it is not on paper to see how they did on specific questions, know that you can always reach out to me for this information if needed.
Throughout the year, we will be doing spiraling review with these terms. After our first three units we will do a spiraling review/assessment with these units for a culminating quiz. We will continue to do this throughout our units of study to continuously work with these words to better learn their meaning in our reading, writing, listening and speaking!
Each week I will be posting your Flocabulary packet in our Reading 2019-2020 Google Classroom under our Flocabulary Topic Heading. I will also provide a link to my on-line flashcards on Quizlet here to supplement your studying and review!