Posts on “ news ”

If the kids in your life have seen the news in the past few days, they’ve seen the devastating weather that’s plaguing parts of the U.S.  It’s scary stuff.  To help explain what’s happening, we’re offering free access to our Tornadoes topic. For more relevant topics, explore our Spotlight: Natural Disasters. Need some tips on working the topic into your lessons? Use the Tornadoes quiz, Q&A, or KWL chart for an idea of what students already know and what they want to learn. As new questions crop up, return to the topic and add to the KWL chart. Use our printable and typeable Activity Pages to reinforce concepts. The In Practice feature of the Tornadoes FYI is another way to review: have the class come up with tornado safety tips or come up with their own safety plan. Amid the recovery efforts, our thoughts go out to everyone affected by this devastation and to those helping to provide relief. How are you addressing the tornadoes with your students? Please share your tips, thoughts, or ideas.

Kassie Jackson is a 1st grade teacher for the Great Falls School District in Great Falls, MT. She recently received her masters in technology and is passionate about engaging her students with technology. She shares her experience of leveraging a local grant opportunity to enrich her students’ lives with BrainPOP Jr. I am so excited to bring technology into the schools and into my classroom. I believe that technology is the key to engaging students these days. Most of my students in my school come from low income families and don’t have computers at home. I think it’s important for my students to use technology every day. Every lesson I teach, I try to incorporate technology with my interactive white board. I recently came across BrainPop Jr. when I was looking for an introduction video for place value. During the video, I noticed all my students were engaged and loved it!  I instantly wanted my students to have access to BrainPop Jr., as it is a great resource for the classroom.  Although there are many free resources available through BrainPOP, I needed additional funds to obtain the full subscription. I came across a grant opportunity with our local TV station… Read the Rest»

Like you, we woke up to the devastating news of the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. It’s hard enough for adults to fathom this kind of natural disaster.  But what about kids? Whether it’s on television or the radio, online, or in the papers, they’re hearing about it – and that means they’ve got questions. So how do you explain it to them? How do you make it seem a little less scary? Hopefully, we can help a little bit.  We’ve made our Tsunami resources free for the next few weeks.  We also encourage you to check out our related resources as you address these difficult headlines with the kids in your life. Turn to topics including, Earthquakes, Natural Disasters, and Plate Tectonics; and, for K-3, Fast Land Changes. Take a look at a Natural Disasters lesson plan presented by our own Dr. Kari Stubbs at the NSTA regional conference in Kansas City, Missouri last year. Then, there are many ways to broach the subject: assess what kids already know using our quizzes.  Reinforce the concepts with our typeable Activity Pages. Delve deeper with the FYI features and print them out so students can share with their families. Start… Read the Rest»

Congratulations to head teacher, Colter Barnes, and his Kokhanok middle school class for their amazing accomplishment as top 5 finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest.  Colter shares their journey from a BrainPOP social studies lesson all the way to the Big Apple! One day, in the remote fly-in only “bush” village of Kokhanok, Alaska, while my middle school class (made up of 6 diverse Alaska Native students of Yupik Eskimo, Athapascan Indian, and Aleut descent) were logging in to BrainPOP to work on social studies, they noticed a news feature and exclaimed, “Samsung is giving away $1,000,000 to schools!”  Instantly, their focus had been diverted and they wanted to explore this exciting opportunity.  After further research they learned it was an educational contest that would award students who could best demonstrate an answer to the question, “How can math and science help the environment in your community?” Being from a village of 160 people, where roughly 80% of its inhabitants don’t have internet access, my students were both eager and nervous.  Do we have what it takes to compete with kids from California, Texas, and New York City?  How cool would it be if we won and received… Read the Rest»

Have you checked out BrainPOP Jr. today? We’ve made a few ch-ch-ch-changes that help improve usability. Most notably, we increased the size of our movie-playing window on the topic page, so it hooks in students and captures their attention immediately. Users can now play the movie right in the topic page with closed captioning on! Want to see it bigger? Select the “Movie Size” button for your choice of small, medium, or full screen. In the full screen mode, the movie will take over your entire screen–perfect for sharing with the whole class! Just click on “Esc” or click on the “Movie Size” button to exit the full screen mode. The medium screen mode is particularly helpful for interactive whiteboard users–you can have your tools or flipcharts open and play the movie at the same time. Of course, closed captioning is available on all modes. Please note where we put the Lesson Ideas button, right at the bottom. That’s where you can access each topic’s background information and suggested activities for the classroom or for home. And of course, you still have the same access to all of BrainPOP Jr.’s leveled quizzes, activities, graphic organizers, writing prompts, and other engaging… Read the Rest»

We’ve got new resources to make it easy to keep up with us! Stay current by signing up for BrainPOP’s newsletter and reading the latest reviews. Join BrainPOP at an event or participate in an online professional development webinar. Connect with BrainPOP on social networking sites. Share BrainPOP resources with your favorite teacher community. Check it out on our News and Events page, and let us know what you think by posting comments below!