Posts on “ science ”

The beginning of August means the beginning of the school year is just around the corner and our Back to School spotlight has just want you need to get your students ready for a successful school year.  We’ve included topics such as Online Safety, Bullying, Washing Hands, Getting Help, and Friends so you can build a classroom community and support the optimum learning environment.  Give students a peek at some of the activities and skills they’ll cover throughout the school year with our Reading Skills, Research, Book Report, and Making Observations movies.  We’ve even included some lesson plans and graphic organizers to include in your back-to-school plans! August’s Nature of the Universe spotlight is out of this world!  Satisfy students’ curiosity of outer space with our Black Holes, Galaxies, and Constellations movies.  We’ve also included our very own BrainPOP created game, Chronopticon, as part of this spotlight so students can take an interactive approach to learning about the Earth-Moon-Sun system.  Since we’re lucky enough to experience two full moons this month (August 2nd and 31st), don’t forget to check out our Moon Phases movie to celebrate the occasion.

School’s out for summer, but that doesn’t mean students can’t squeeze in some summer learning with our spotlights. July’s spotlight, Red, White, and Blue, includes movies and activities to help us celebrate our country’s independence.  Students can explore United States history through our Declaration of Independence, Causes of the American Revolution, and Thirteen Colonies movies.  And, don’t forget our very first president, George Washington!  Students can test their U.S. knowledge with the accompanying interactive quizzes and activities.  This month’s other spotlight, Animals, gives students the opportunity to learn about both domestic and wild animals.  From dogs and cats to penguins and dolphins, students can become experts on the animals they find most interesting. We also have a number of spotlights that aren’t month specific and are perfect for students to enjoy all summer long.  Why not learn about the authors who wrote the books they’re reading?  Students can extend their summer reading assignments with our Books & Authors spotlight.  We’ve included movies about classic and talented authors like Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, and more.  Additionally, check out the Famous Scientists spotlight where students can become scientists themselves.  The Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Darwin movies offer hands-on… Read the Rest»

  Things get a little weird this month on BrainPOP with June’s spotlight: Weird Science.  We’ve included everything from Bruises to Bats to Boogers.  Yuck!  Explore those strange carnivorous plants and follow up by playing Crazy Plant Shop, available on GameUp.  You’ll find content on creatures from under the sea, including giant squid and cnidarians, as well as a great extension activity to learn about the effects of an oil spill on the ocean.  We’ve even included some topics that are literally out of this world such as black holes and aliens, which has a related game on GameUp. K-3 topics include Fossils, Camouflage, and Ocean Habitats. June’s additional spotlight on Grammar includes topics that cover grammar, punctuation, and fun with words.  Help students put the brakes on those run-on sentences and polish their writing with the correct use of hyphens and dashes, semicolons and capitalization.  Encourage them to add some variety to their work with our Antonyms, Synonyms, and Homonyms movie while getting to the root of their words with the Etymology movie.  The BrainPOP Jr. spotlight offers Possessive Nouns, Tenses, Capital and Lowercase, Types of Sentences, and much more.    

Jaclyn McLaren is a 6th grade Earth Science teacher at Webb Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, GA. I have been teaching 6th Grade Earth Science for six years and we have been able to use BrainPOP, thanks to a PTA grant, for the past five years at my school.   The teachers at my school use the resources on a daily basis.  BrainPOP brings an innovative educational experience to our classrooms where the students look forward to learning in this creative way.  They enthusiastically focus on the fresh new ideas offered during these movies and continue on to the final questions with much anticipation. This year though I wanted to do something different as a test review.  I was thinking how I could incorporate BrainPOP into my classroom.  Then it came to me, I would have students create their own videos on topics taught in class.  The students would get in groups and I would assign them each a different topic discussed over the school year.  I decided to incorporate this idea for use as a year end review.  The students overwhelmingly agreed how exciting it would be to create their own videos on topics taught in the class.  They formed… Read the Rest»

Wednesday, March 14 Special time: 7:30PM EST Getting Creative: Scientific Illustrations & Other Projects All the way from Shanghai, we welcome Laura Brown, a high school science teacher, for this webinar on scientific illustrations and other creative projects. Find out how she and her students use BrainPOP movies as models for these illustrations, and to create new scripts and movies that reinforce key concepts. Laura will share some of the incredible work her students have produced, and you’ll leave feeling just as inspired as they are.

BrainPOP Educators Brennan Plummer, Jarrod Stephens and Brian Cook at Worthington Elementary School in Kentucky lead a Student Technology Leadership Program for aspiring technologists! Brennan contacted us to share about their most recent research projects on Steve Jobs and QR codes. One component of this research project was the creation of BrainPOP videos – complete with Tim, Moby, sharp dialogue and a pointed question. Jarrod shares that the project took about 2 weeks, “After completing the scripts and storyboards, there were countless hours of rehearsing and recording. There were lots of laughs.” He continues, “the most surprising element of the project was to see how engaged the kids became!  They were in my room every day to ask about when they could come in and work. Most of the work was completed after school hours and both the boys and girls who took part in the project loved taking turns being Moby.”  Take a look at the fruits of their labor, and if you’ve made some awesome BrainPOP projects with your students, please share with us! Congratulations to the STLP students at Worthington! What is a Steve Jobs?   What is a Steve Jobs? from Brennan Plummer on Vimeo. What is a… Read the Rest»

Can YOU learn how a cell cycle works by playing a GAME? That’s the challenge Sarah Jean-Daum gave her students – 7th-graders at NYC’s Cathedral School – earlier this month. The game in question? Control of the Cell Cycle, available on GameUp. On December 6th, we had the privilege of visiting the class to see how they were doing with said challenge. Students had about 20 minutes to play Control of the Cycle individually on laptops.  They were fully engrossed as we observed them asking each other questions, taking notes, sharing tips, and checking in with their teacher. When the 20 minutes were up, Sarah took some time to debrief. She asked the class questions about their game playing technique, leading them to collaborate at the whiteboard on an explanation of what they’d done. Most of the students commented that note-taking, as Sarah had suggested, proved helpful as they played. Sarah then had students reenter the game and walk her through the steps they’d taken.  She prompted them to  label each phase and asked them if they’d noticed the visual aids embedded in the game. What happened in Gap 1? What happened in Synthesis? The lesson wrapped up with BrainPOP’s Mitosis movie and its… Read the Rest»

With all the buzz at  BrainPOP about the STEM video game challenge and this week’s Global Education Conference, today we welcome Guest Blogger Laura Brown. Laura is an expatriate science teacher working in Shanghai at Concordia International School.  Recently selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator and  member of the Learning 2.0 Asia Technology Conference executive committee, Laura is passionate about sharing her experiences in using technology in the classroom and assisting other educators to explore its ability to enrich and deepen student learning for a more authentic understanding. Most people are well aware of the significant differences between western-style teaching methodologies and a traditional Chinese classroom. The large class sizes, lack of interactive and engaging learning activities, and the broadcast teaching approach, not only limits a student’s ability to think flexibly, it also does not fully meet all students learning styles and many are subsequently left behind. The Shanghai Education Bureau has recently observed trends that suggest, despite what many would think, the average Chinese student’s understanding of, and ability to apply scientific concepts, is lower than the equivalent age student studying in a western-style classroom. The Bureau has since established a program for International Collaborative Research on Using Multimedia… Read the Rest»

October 7th is Ada Lovelace Day, a worldwide event named for 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace. Using the power of blogging, the day celebrates women who’ve followed career paths into the STEM areas: science, technology, engineering, and math.   As in years past, BrainPOP is proud to take part in the occasion, which serves in large part to inspire young girls to enter into STEM-related careers. Last year, we created a new topic on the “Enchantress of Numbers” herself, Ada Lovelace. If you haven’t done so already, we hope you’ll take some time to watch the movie, take the quiz, and read more about Lovelace with our FYIs. We also encourage your students to enjoy our other movies on some very accomplished women in science and technology, including Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Sally Ride and last week’s webinar subject Jane Goodall. Students might also take this opportunity to research a current woman in science or technology, and either write about her or make a presentation to a class or small group. If your students have their own blogs, or if your class runs a blog, you can even sign in on Findingada.com to have your post(s) be counted among the thousands around the world that will be published… Read the Rest»

At BrainPOP we update the site with new movies, quizzes, games and teaching materials all the time.  To ensure that everything we release is of the highest quality, we call on our esteemed education advisors for their guidance and wisdom.  Today we welcome the newest member of our BrainPOP advisory board,  former Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Dr. Henry Adam.  Dr. Adam has an impressive bio that you can read here. BrainPOP educators recently contacted Dr. Adam to hear his thoughts about his newest appointment here at BrainPOP.  He writes, “As a pediatrician I’ve been trained to believe that prevention trumps treatment, and prevention of course depends on education. My work both as a clinician with patients and their families, and as an academic with students and house staff has largely been focused on education.  So joining BrainPOP seems natural for me.”  Well said doc! We are honored to have Dr. Adam join our board, and we look forward to receiving his guidance as we develop more health related content.