By Katelyn Fry

I remember high school like it was yesterday and one thing I could never understand was how I could get a song stuck in my head and sing it from start to finish effortlessly, but remembering what I need to remember for an exam? That required hours of reading the same thing over and over, testing myself on homemade flashcards, and doing everything I could to retain the information.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s dealt with this. While studying for the SAT in high school,  Blake Harrison wondered why he could memorize every word to his favorite rap songs, but not any of the SAT vocabulary words. After graduating college and waiting tables in 2003, Harrison met Alex Rappaport, a composer and producer. The Wall Street Journal reported last May that, while playing basketball one day, "Mr. Harrison shared an idea he’d had since high school. 'Somebody should make rap songs with SAT words.'" Then, in 2004, the partners co-founded a modern learning program for the modern student: Flocabulary.

A Modern Version of SchoolHouse Rock!

Flocabulary creates original hip-hop music and lyrics to teach K-12 students in most academic subjects. The methodology centers around the idea that "music facilitates memorization and recall of academic content, while the specific use of hip-hop and other culturally-relevant media increases student engagement.”

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, and revived in the 1990s, the Schoolhouse Rock! interstitial animated shows were the coolest way to learn. You probably still remember the iconic “I’m Just a Bill”  and Conjunction Function. The songs stayed in our head - and taught us how a bill becomes a law and the grammatical function of a conjunction. You can think of Focabulary SchoolHouse Rock! for the hip-hop generation.

By 2011, Harrison and Rappaport launched Flocabulary.com, an online subscription service to schools, offering teachers full access to the site content, including news videos published often, lesson plans, activities and student assessment tests. A typical Flocabulary lesson plan consists of students watching a hip-hop video on an academic subject. Hip-hop is used to get students engage in the subject matter. Then, students complete a variety of online exercises based on what’s they’ve watched, enabling them to get closer to mastering the criteria. Flocabulary then encourages children to create their own academic raps, “giving them a chance to apply and share what they’ve learned in a creative format.”


Some of the best Flocabulary videos from 2015

According to Flocabulary’s research, 90% of teachers who use the program believe that it increases critical thinking, 97% believe it increases retention, and 96% believe it increases student achievement overall. Flocabulary meets the Common Core standards and covers current events, language arts, math, science, social studies, vocabulary and life skills. It is now used in over 20,000 schools. The for-profit venture has a focus on outreach underprivileged schools.

While, full subscriptions to Flocabulary are available only to school districts, there are several videos on Flocabulary.com and YouTube that you and your nieces and nephews can search for and learn together. The next time you hear the kids “dropping a rhyme,” pay close attention – it may not be the latest Drake or Kanye West song, but something they just learned or even wrote themselves.

And hey, don't we all still remember the lyrics to "I'm Just a Bill?"



Photo: Flocabulary
Published: March 22, 2017