He wants them to write it in their own rap lyrics. In the classroom, most of the kids seem to understand that "distort" means to alter or change.Īnd then, like many English teachers, he asks the class to use the word in context. My sister is in high school," says the 20-year-old Martin. He's amassed more than 450 examples so far.
#Vocab raps full
Hip-hop, Martin says, is full of words students might need to know for the SAT or ACT. The Hip-Hop Education Center, founded by New York University professor Martha Diaz, lists hundreds of programs that use hip-hop culture as a teaching tool.īut Martin says aggregating his lessons on a website for kids to use anywhere - at home, on their phone - sets his program apart.
This undergrad isn't the first to think of using hip-hop in the classroom to engage students. He's using rap lyrics to teach vocabulary, in the hope that some will connect more to popular music than they do to static words on a page. The program is called Rhymes with Reason. "OK, so in this example," he says to the class, "When they say 'so rude that your mentality is distorting this reality,' what do you think he means?" He starts the class by connecting his laptop to a projector, and then he veers off the traditional path, away from rote memorization - and toward rap music.Ī short song clip plays over speakers: "So rude that your mentality is distorting your reality." He's here to test out the website he developed, which he hopes will help junior and senior high school students learn the vocabulary they'll need for their college entrance exams. Austin Martin, a junior at Brown University, stands in front of an eighth-grade class at Community Preparatory School in Providence, R.I.
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