H.E.L.P. (Hip Hop Educational Literacy Program)

The Hip-Hop Educational Literacy Program (H.E.L.P.) was created and designed by Educational Lyrics.  H.E.L.P. combines the language and music of the Hip Hop genre to teach reading and writing skills.  Based on National Literacy Standards, H.E.L.P. uses Hip Hop lyrics to address different learning styles and teach to multiple intelligences.  Our instructors will use H.E.L.P. to connect with the best and the brightest, as well as those students who have unmotivated to read or write.  H.E.L.P. addressed the five essential components of effective reading instruction established by the National Reading Panel in 2000 (fluency, phonetics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension).

Studies have shown that Hip Hop is one of the most effective tools for communication and instruction in today’s classroom.* An increasing number of studies show that students have difficulty relating to teachers.**

H.E.L.P. is designed for students from elementary school through high school and provides activities that address their unique literacy needs.  The H.E.L.P. curriculum uses lyrics from a popular song and creates 60 easy-to-use classroom activities for students of various reading levels.

H.E.L.P. activities include opportunities for students to practice:

-Phonemic awareness and phonic skills, including: identifying, creating, and using rhyming words; studying word families; and reading irregularly spelled words.
-Fluency skills, including: echo and repeated reading, and performance of original writing.
-Vocabulary development, including: explicit and implicit learning of new words, using dictionaries and thesauri, reading sight words, figurative language, and connecting words in their speaking and listening vocabulary to their reading and writing vocabulary.
-Reading comprehension, including: opportunities to read with a purpose comparing texts, using and analyzing poetic devices, identifying explicit and implicit meanings, character studies, and discussion groups.
-Authentic writing, including: poems, songs, essays, research synthesis, and biographies.  H.E.L.P. demonstrates to students how Hip Hop artists play with words and utilize different sounds to make new and interesting rhymes.

Curriculum Developed and Created by EdLyrics

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