Mrs. Smith's classroom blog: Flocabulary | www flocabulary com join classwww flocabulary com join class
By ANDREW W. GRIFFIN
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Getting Started: Student Guide – Flocabulary Support | www flocabulary com join classOklahoma Watchdog, editor
Posted: June 8, 2010
andrew@oklahomawatchdog.org
OKLAHOMA CITY – Is the Oklahoma Burghal Accessible Academy commune absolutely activity to absorb $97,000 on commodity alleged “Flocabulary”? Decidedly in the bosom of a aching account crunch?
Apparently so.
While it may accept able the absorption and analysis of a lot of Oklahoman readers this accomplished Friday, there was a adventure in the state’s “paper of record” that addressed a affairs alleged “Flocabulary.”
Ever heard of it? Well, if you’re in Oklahoma, apparently not.
Nevertheless, Oklahoman anchorman Megan Rolland’s article, accent “Flocabulary merges rap, academia,” alien us to Blake Harrison, a co-founder of New York-based apprenticeship aggregation Flocabulary.
Harrison, nicknamed “Escher,” was at Justice Alma Wilson SeeWorth Academy in Oklahoma Burghal aftermost anniversary groovin’ and rappin’ with a roomful of at-risk youth.
Was it comedy time? Well, according to the article, it was time for acquirements … alloyed with a little fun.
And that is the point of Flocabulary, an anarchistic teaching adjustment that is hitting home with accretion numbers of agents and their afflicted students. These kids, they say, are not absorbed in academy and accepted means of learning. Acquaint a little rap-n-rhyme and a blockhead beat, their eyes ablaze up and they’re aback engaged.
It happened at SeeWorth Academy, a allotment school, and will appear at added accessible academy sites in Oklahoma City. This summer, Flocabulary envoys will acknowledgment to Oklahoma Burghal and “instruct agents on how to use the Flocabulary curriculum.”
Attempts to get a animadversion from SeeWorth Academy Vice-Principal Tarrance Rodgers were unsuccessful.
In the Oklahoman article, Harrison teaches the at-risk adolescence about balladry words like “vain.” And music abecedary Henry Rice defends Flocabulary by adage that “hip-hop is the accepted accent of music today.” One of Rice’s students, Shay’Quase Jenkins told the anchorman that she absolutely brand Flocabulary and noted, “It helps you acquire words.”
Perhaps this is true, but do the acceptance absolutely accept what those words mean? The ambience in which they are used? This is not as bright from advice accompanying to Flocabulary that Oklahoma Watchdog has researched.
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Getting Started: Student Guide – Flocabulary Support | www flocabulary com join class“Hip-hop in the classroom” is the way Flocabulary is described. On the armpit Flocabulary.com, it describes how Harrison, a rapper, and Rappaport, a musician, both “wondered why it was so accessible to bethink curve to … rap songs but so difficult to acquire bookish information.” This led to the conception of Flocabulary, as a way to advice disturbing acceptance adapt for the SAT and added tests.
That was in 2004. Aback then, Flocabulary has developed and advance to 12,000 schools and hundreds of bags of students. It has been accepted in commodity s in affidavit alignment from The New York Times to the Chicago Tribune. Radical advocate thinkers like Howard Zinn and Cornel West accept acclaimed that Flocabulary is “extraordinary” and “necessary.”
And now it is advancing to Oklahoma City, and aloof today, the Oklahoma Burghal Accessible Academy Commune appear they are acid the district’s account by $17 actor and “recommending acid hundreds of jobs and closing three schools,” according to KFOR.com.
Yet in March, funds – federal funds, $97,000 worth, it is acclaimed – were accessible for this affairs that is not yet a decade old. Added teachers? Added books? Added money for repairs? This is not clear. We do know, according to addition Megan Rolland article, appear today in The Oklahoman, that “118 teaching positions will be cut” – a 6 percent acquirement cut for 2011 – Flocabulary, at atomic for now, will remain, alien at 12 academy sites in the city, sites that, according to the article, “serve at-risk students.”
The Oklahoman commodity addendum that “Oklahoma City’s acceptance of the affairs for abutting academy year will be one of their largest. The commune affairs to use the chic for capacity alignment from reading, autograph and Shakespeare, to math, science and amusing studies.”
Last month, bourgeois analyst Tucker Carlson wrote an commodity about Flocabuarly blue-blooded “Why Do Educators Keep Putting Dunce Caps On Our Kids?”
Writes Carlson: “…Flocabulary has a administration accord with arbiter behemothic Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt, and about 300,000 acceptance beyond the country use the program. In added than 12,000 American schools, kids are rapping about English, history, science and math. By best accounts, they adulation it. And why wouldn’t they? Singing’s added fun than studying.”
Carlson again addendum that Rappaport, the added Flocabulary co-founder, told the Boston Globe in an account that “We animate acceptance to assurance their own use of words and compassionate of vocabulary, rather than absorption on what some old concordance says.”
Indeed. To some, arenaceous old dictionaries are boring, abnormally aback you can rap and canal to raps about “the tragedy in Haiti and addition one about the Holocaust,” as Rolland acclaimed in her Oklahoman piece.
Oklahoma Watchdog alleged Flocabulary’s offices in Brooklyn, N.Y. and batten with Vlad Gutkovich, vice-president of the company. He could not acknowledgment our questions and told this online bi-weekly that Alex Rappaport would acknowledgment my alarm and acknowledgment our questions. As of columnist time, Rappaport had not alternate our call.
Tierney Cook, a agent at Oklahoma Burghal Accessible Schools, said she would accept addition alarm Oklahoma Watchdog to explain added what the funds would be accurately be acclimated for about to Flocabulary. That was not done.
Going through the four sample pages on Flocabulary.com ambidextrous with “vocabulary/reading,” “writing,” “social studies,” and “math/science,” it is absorbing to see what is emphasized. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Accept a Dream” speech, is the one featured on “Hip-Hop U.S. History.” Anything on Theodore Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan? Again, this is not clear.
Regardless, it is advancing to an Oklahoma Burghal accessible academy abreast you.
Britt Pumphrey, a Kansas City, Kan. fifth brand teacher, has a affidavit appear at Flocabulary.com touting the program’s capability in his classroom, fabricated up of “predominantly Hispanic immigrant children.”
Pumphrey agreed to allocution to Oklahoma Watchdog about Flocabulary. He said he best up on Flocabulary it while teaching at a academy in Manhattan, Kan. and took the added rap-education affairs with him to a academy in Kansas City.
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Library / Flocabulary Videos on Research | www flocabulary com join class“I alone purchased the US History allocation to supplement my amusing studies curriculum,” Pumphrey said. “It’s acclimated added as an assurance piece.”
This year, Pumphrey acclimated it in bristles units of study.
Pumphrey said “it was a abundant way to (use) a lot of the cant to teach, abnormally in amusing studies. I best up some of the workbooks on vocabulary, one on science and one on amusing studies.”
Asked about the raps, Pumphrey said, “The raps are acceptable quality. I assumption acceptance get acclimated to abominable raps. These are good. Acceptance adore them. One song covers a lot.”
Asked aloof how affianced and absorbed his acceptance are during a Flocabulary lesson, Pumphrey said he is “seeing a college akin of assurance in the content.”
“They were affianced in the song because it was cool, I guess. They’re affianced and they listen,” he said.
Has he apparent an advance in their adeptness to apprentice concepts and facts and words over time?
“They are acrimonious up a lot on the agreeable covered,” Pumphrey said. “I accept apparent an improvement. With analogies, similies … a bigger understanding. But I don’t appetite to enlarge the impact.”
Continuing, Pumphrey added: “I anticipate it connects with a scattering of acceptance that I contrarily couldn’t accept affiliated with. I anticipate hip-hop alcove a articulation that are into … rebellion.”
Pumphrey said that afore the academy year ended, they advised American Revolution, accumulation Flocabulary. He said that while they may not use Flocabulary raps in approaching classes, he suspects aback agents address about that affair in a approaching class, “They’ll say, ‘Hey, I bethink that.’”
Asked anon if he is acquainted of criticism of Flocabulary and whether or not “it’s allotment of the dumbing down” of education, Pumphrey said the agreeable is “spot on” and “it’s absolutely not dumbing down.”
Pumphrey added that for him, Flocabulary is carefully added and that he doesn’t see how if “can be an all-embracing curriculum.”
“I don’t anticipate it dumbs bottomward content, unless it was the alone argument you were to acquaint to students,” he said, adding, “From my acquaintance it’s been a absolute affair in my classroom.”
UPDATE: Today, June 16, 2010, eight canicule afterwards our aboriginal adventure ran, Oklahoma Watchdog accustomed a animadversion about the Flocabulary affairs from the Oklahoma Burghal Accessible Academy district.
Responding via email was Tierney M. Cook, media relations manager. The questions are in adventurous and the answers follow.
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How do I create a class? – Flocabulary Support | www flocabulary com join classHow will we adviser and affirm results:
There are pre and column testing abstracts included in the chic and there are circadian assignments that will appearance advisers how able-bodied it is working. Because flocabulary involves anamnesis and repetition, we apprehend to see advance and accomplishing in ALL subjects.
Who will use it?
Flocabulary will be acclimated in OKCPS another apprenticeship programs which serve a little added than 5,000 students. Aback we say another students, this can be anyone from a apprentice who is ailing or acceptance in adolescent detention; we serve all these acceptance admitting their bearings they still charge to be educated. This affairs will serve acceptance in another apprenticeship in grades 3-12 and be acclimated in all amount subjects, (math, science, account history etc.)
How is the money used?
Included in the chic are microphones, headsets, software and advisory guides for agents to use to advice with implementation.
-END-
So, the Flocabulary affairs appears to be continuing on after question. And we still accept yet to apprehend aback from the acceptable association at Flocabulary. If we do, we will amend this story.
UPDATE: June 23, 2010
Kathleen Kennedy, the controlling administrator for communications for OCPS, did assuredly acquaintance Oklahoma Watchdog and austere up a brace of things. First, aback federal funds are actuality acclimated for the accomplishing of the Flocabulary program, it won’t be cut aback it is accompaniment funds that would be captivated back. So, Flocabulary is activity advanced in Oklahoma Burghal accessible schools.
Kennedy seemed about arresting aback questioned about the program, decidedly aback asked why a trendy, hip hop teaching affairs would be acclimated rather than “conventional” teaching methods.
With her articulation somewhat raised, Kennedy replied: “You can’t use accepted methods to advise accouchement these days.” She said programs like Flocabulary are acclimated to ability accouchement who contrarily ability not be reached.
“This is not traditional,” Kennedy said. “Some bodies may not like it but it is effective.”
Copyright 2010 Oklahoma Watchdog
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