What Flocabulary Actually Does With Figurative Language
The Figurative Language Video from Flocabulary is a roughly three-minute educational rap that walks students through similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and idioms. Each device gets a verse with a clear example, then a quick definition restated in lyrical form. It plays over simple animations and moves at a pace designed for middle school comprehension. It is not a comprehensive literary analysis resource. It is a hook — a first exposure tool that gets the vocabulary in students' heads so you can build on it afterward.I have used this video in seventh-grade ELA rooms for years, and the honest assessment is that it works well for retention of the basic terms but does almost nothing for deep application. That gap is where most teachers run into trouble if they treat the video as the lesson instead of the warm-up. Minute 0–3: Play the video straight through with no pauses. Students listen. Do not stop mid-video unless someone genuinely cannot parse a lyric. Most of them will understand the surface examples even if they cannot yet label them. Minute 3–5: Put a blank two-column chart on the board. Column one lists the seven devices. Column two is empty. Ask students to match the example from the rap to the correct term. This takes about ninety seconds if you keep them moving. If they stall on personification versus metaphor, move on. You will circle back.
Minute 5–15: Have them write one original sentence for three of the devices on a slip of paper. Not all seven. Three. The constraint forces quality over quantity, and it reveals who actually understands the difference between hyperbole and simile in real time. Collect the slips. Glance at them. That is your formative data for the day. Minute 15–20: Address the top two errors you spotted. If half the class confused alliteration with onomatopoeia, re-teach that distinction immediately with a fresh example. Do not reteach the whole video. Just the point of failure.
I ran into a specific edge case last semester where a student with auditory processing delays kept mishearing "simile" as "smile" in the rap, which derailed his entire matching task. He was frustrated and checked out within sixty seconds. The workaround was straightforward: I pulled the lyrics sheet from Flocabulary's resource library, printed it at 14-point font, and let him follow along visually while listening. Once he could read the word "simile" next to the audio, everything clicked. Without the printed text, he was just guessing at sounds.What the Video Actually Covers
The standard Flocabulary Figurative Language track hits seven devices. Simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and idiom. Some versions include understatement or euphemism as bonus mentions, but those are not consistent across updates. The examples are deliberately simple — "as brave as a lion," "the wind whispered," "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." Simple on purpose. The goal is recognition, not nuance.Where This Approach Breaks Down
Flocabulary's video format has real limitations that become obvious if you use it past the introductory stage.First, the rap format locks every definition into a single interpretation. There is no room for ambiguity, which means students never encounter the messier, more useful edge cases where a single line of poetry contains three overlapping devices. A text like Frost or Dickinson will confuse kids who only know the Flocabulary version because real literature does not label itself. Second, the subscription model is expensive for schools on tight budgets. District licenses run several thousand dollars annually depending on seat count, and many Title I schools simply cannot justify the cost when free alternatives exist. Pixton, ReadWorks, and Newsela all offer figurative language exercises at no extra charge if you already have a subscription to their platforms. Third, the video assumes a certain listening stamina that younger or lower-level readers do not always have. Thirty-second stretches of rapid lyrical delivery can leave struggling students behind before the first example even lands. Pausing and rewriting is a band-aid, not a fix.
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Counter-Intuitive Things That Actually Work
Most teachers assume that repeating the video improves retention. It does not. I tested this across two semesters by playing the video twice to one class and once to another. The single-play group scored slightly higher on the application quiz. The reason is probably that repeated exposure creates false confidence — students think they know it because it feels familiar, not because they can use it. Familiarity is not mastery. Another thing that surprises people: having students create their own Flocabulary-style rap verse for one device outperforms worksheets by a noticeable margin on follow-up assessments. It forces them to internally rehearse the definition and the example simultaneously. The output is messy and often funny, but the cognitive load is the right kind of load.Free Alternatives If You Do Not Have a Flocabulary Subscription
If your school does not subscribe to Flocabulary, you still have solid options. The Khan Academy figurative language module covers the same seven devices with longer explanations and practice problems. Edpuzzle lets you upload any free YouTube explanation of metaphor versus simile and embed comprehension questions directly into the video timeline. Both are free. Neither matches the engagement hook that Flocabulary's rap format provides, but they fill the instructional gap adequately.Quick Reference: Device Cheat Sheet From the Video
Simile — comparison using "like" or "as."Metaphor — direct comparison without "like" or "as."
Personification — giving human traits to non-human things.
Alliteration — repeated consonant sounds at the start of words.
Hyperbole — extreme exaggeration.
Onomatopoeia — a word that sounds like what it describes.
Idiom — a phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the individual words.
