We are so fortunate to have teachers like Robert Miller, who teaches 4th and 5th grade at Port Orange Elementary in Port Orange, Florida. He let me know he was doing a presentation on BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. at his school, and agreed to share his tips and resources with us. Read on, and please let us know how it goes if you use Robert’s resources, or if you’ve got some of your own to share!

I have been using BrainPOP within my own classroom for years, but last year Port Orange Elementary upgraded to a School subscription using improvement funds.  By surveying the level of use of BrainPOP in our classrooms, I decided to lead an in-service to get the entire faculty fired up on a great resource already easily available… and also for selfish reasons of showcasing a product that would definitely be utilized school wide after exposure, thus ensuring interest and support to guarantee a vocal lobbying group for renewal funding!
If you check out the handy workshop resources under “Professional Development,” you will find logical outlines to share. From my in-service RSVPs,  I would be working with more primary grades so I made BrainPOP Jr. a focus. However, it was still very easy to include corresponding material from BrainPOP (I had both sites running under different tabs of my web browser… just a quick toggle back or forth to answer questions about either).

Read the rest of this entry »

We hope you’ll explore our Spotlight on Early Americans if you haven’t already. We’re featuring a lesson plan on Thanksgiving, and our Thanksgiving movie will be free through Sunday! It features 3 great Activity Pages (including short answers, a graphic organizer and vocabulary), and a fun, fact-filled FYI full of extension possibilities. For K-3 content, check out BrainPOP Jr.’s Thanksgiving movie.

Enjoy, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

We always love reading about how teachers and students use BrainPOP on these two blogs… That’s why we’re nominating them for the 2008 Edublog Awards! Please check out our nominees below!

For Best educational use of video/visual, we nominate:

Max Class Online

Robert Miller is a fourth and fifth grade teacher at Port Orange Elementary in Port Orange, Florida. He inspires his students to create BrainPOP-inspired videos and podcasts, which are as entertaining as they are educational. You can really get a sense of the emphasis Robert places on process with his students, and it’s clear they love learning!

For Best class blog, we nominate:

http://kootmansclass.blogspot.com/

Dave Kootman is a fourth grade teacher at Mary Fay Pendleton Elementary School on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, CA. He does a fantastic job getting his students involved in writing their blog. We are always excited to hear from his students how they are using BrainPOP in their studies.

Are you doing great stuff with BrainPOP on your classroom websites or blogs? Tell us about it by posting below!

I always find it fascinating to hear what’s happening in education abroad. We are so fortunate to have connected with Jan MacNamara, the Primary Library and Information Services teacher, at a one-to-one laptop school all the way in Queensland, Australia. Jan will be presenting BrainPOP at the VITTA conference this week, and was kind enough to share some thoughts on using BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. with her students. Take a look and please let us know what you think below!

Differentiation is so important in the classroom.  My students are selecting their own areas of investigation from the truckload of choice that is BrainPOP. They might choose to work alone or with a friend. There is no problem working in BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. My ESL students work by switching between both areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Today BrainPOP was visited by one of Promethean’s super-talented TLC’s, Ben Posner. Ben showed us Promethean’s new Activexpression devices and helped us brainstorm ways to use them with BrainPOP. Activexpressions are Student Response Systems, or SRS devices. If you’re not familiar with SRS devices, they allow teachers to get instant feedback on what each student knows or has to say. Newer SRS devices allow students to respond in a variety of ways; the Activexpression devices even allow students to text short answers with a mobile-phone like design.

One topic we explored was how students could use SRS devices like Activexpression to write collaboratively. For example, In BrainPOP’s Thirteen Colonies Activity: “Think About It,”, each student could use the devices to text one reason why colonial immigrants and modern immigrants have similar reasons for coming to America. Their various texted responses would appear on the interactive whiteboard at the front of the room. Then the class could decide how to arrange or edit the various responses into one paragraph.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited that students can now put those texting skills to work for an educational purpose! What are your thoughts? Are you already using SRS with BrainPOP in your classroom? Tell us about it!

We get many requests to link BrainPOP to your websites, so here you go! You can get BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. links by scrolling to the bottom of our Just For Fun page. What else would you like to see? Please post comments below!

Times are tough — especially with budget cuts in education. I am excited to feature one of our BrainPOP Election Lesson Plan Winners as today’s guest blogger. Peggy is a Gifted & Talented teacher at Mina Elementary in Bastrop, TX. She’s written and received two grants, and was kind enough to share some tips with us! Please add on to these by commenting below if you have some grant writing tips of your own to share.

*The more students who will be impacted, the better.

*Innovative and creativity helps

*Backing up what you say in the grant is really important.   This goes to figures and/or information that proves there is a need.  I  have used BrainPOP in the past a lot for Science.  So, I used that as a huge part of my approach. I found some articles written about how weak our schools are in the area of
Science, therefore showing a need for new programs and approaches.

*I found two teachers on our campus who were spending their own money on BrainPOP for classroom access.  One of the first grade teachers had a great lesson plan she had already used with BrainPOP and shared that with me.  Then I added that to the grant proposal.

*I always try and get someone to proof read before I submit.

Good Luck!  Peggy

Hurry! Today is the last day of our special promotion that will save you 20 percent on Classroom subscriptions. Registered BrainPOP Educators can click here to start saving! If you are not already registered, we’ve made it quick and easy. Take advantage of this deal immediately! Register now! Offer ends November 14, 2008.

We LOVE getting work from students who share what they learned from BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr!  BrainPOP Jr’s Bulletin Board is a great place to kick off a K-3 lesson with some inspiration. Please encourage your students to submit any BrainPOP Jr. inspired art, writing, or videos so we can expand their audience and publish them on BrainPOP for the world to see! Of course we’re also eager to share teacher-created materials, so keep those lesson plans, graphic organizers, and video tutorials coming!

We met a fabulous middle school science teacher at the recent T+L conference in Seattle. Nicole Yemothy teaches in Kent, WA. She was kind enough to share this story with us about how BrainPOP helped while she was away from her students to attend the conference. Read on! And if you’ve got a story to share with us, please post on our blog!

As a Title 1 school, our kids are from a very diverse background, with over 70% low income family on free and reduced lunch. At Mill Creek Middle School in Kent, we have over 11 languages spoken at our school alone. Our kids come from an incredible diverse background as well as educational abilities. This diversity is great for the kids and interpersonal growth but the various learning levels make teaching a daily challenge especially in overcrowded classrooms and tight budgets.

BrainPOP is one of those key programs that help even the learning field in my classroom and at our school. After my attending the Brain POP seminar, I used it in my classroom while I was in at the conference for the second day. The results were amazing. I come home from the first day at the conference to emails from 20% of my kids asking for clarification, help, and re-explanation on their day’s activity on the Atmosphere. Since I could not be in the classroom myself the next day, I “sent” Tim and Moby to my classroom (via a BrainPOP video). Read the rest of this entry »