Great way to get a weekly dose of current events. The kids love it!

My Take

I love this product. Each week Flocabulary puts out a 2 minute rap that includes 6-8 major current events happenings from the week. In addition to 1-2 pieces of world and national news, Flocab generally includes a sports or entertainment event, a science or tech event, and a lot of times something positive that teens are doing (science fairs, the boy who got admitted to all 8 Ivy League schools, etc.) Teachers who only know "The Week In Rap" from Channel One are missing out. If you subscribe to flocabulary.com you get the 2 minute rap, which is great, but admittedly superficial. The subscription is beneficial, though, because you also get the lyrics. Each of the events have a clickable link that takes you to a 1-2 paragraph description of what the lyric was talking about along with a picture. If you want even more information, you can click at the bottom of that screen and it will take you to a national news story for that event, generally from the AP (i.e. they try not to lean left or right w/ their sources). There's also a quiz and a weekly shout-out contest. The kids love it. I admit that some of them might like the beats more than the lyrics, but they do like the discussion. I have HS students, but the librarian uses this with her middle school students as well. Sometimes we just listen and talk about a few of the events, and other times our whole Fridays are consumed with great discussions. I highly recommend!