Posts on “ Spotlights ”

Recognize Earth Awareness month with BrainPOP’s spotlight and the Mixer! Our Earth Awareness spotlight includes environmentally friendly topics such as Wind Energy, Recycling, and Hybrid Cars to reinforce students’ understanding of what they can do to help our environment. We’ve even included lesson plans and games to further support this important topic. Once you’ve taken the time to explore our April spotlight, test your students’ earth awareness by creating a unique, BrainPOP quiz using the Mixer. Choose from hundreds of earth-focused quiz questions, or craft some of your own to customize and remix a quiz that meets the specific needs of your class. To get started, you’ll need a BrainPOP Educators account that is linked to your BrainPOP subscription. For tips and tricks on using this valuable tool, be sure to check out the Mixer screencast.

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.    

Wednesday, May 16 3:00PM ET: Memorial Day is more than the summer kickoff – it’s an important topic to address in the classroom. BrainPOP and Knovation (formerly netTrekker) team up to help you identify the most engaging lessons and useful resources focusing on the holiday. We’ll demonstrate the pairing of BrainPOP’s high-quality content with Knovation’s extensive Social Studies collection and useful search and resource building features. Take home best practices for creating engaging and meaningful learning experiences for your students to remember this day and what it is all about.

We’re spotlighting Sports & Fitness and Practical Math this month, so be sure to check out the collection of movies and other resources featured throughout all of May.   The arrival of warmer weather moves kids outdoors, so why not cover some topics they can take outside with them?  Our Soccer, Football, and Fitness movies can get kids up and moving while our Bicycle Safety movie is a perfect refresher for students before they hit the road.  With Baseball season in full swing, our Jackie Robinson movie is a valuable resource for teaching about the history of the sport.  Students often ask, “Why do we need to learn this?”  Answer their question with the featured topics and resources in the Practical Math spotlight.  From Comparing Prices to Estimating, we’ve included math concepts that students can apply to everyday life outside of the classroom.  

Late summer often coincides with wacky weather and other natural disasters, which is why we’re featuring our Natural Disasters Spotlight through the end of August. Worried about Hurricane Irene, currently threatening the Atlantic Coast? Show your students the BrainPOP movie on Hurricanes and the BrainPOP Jr. movie on Fast Land Changes to help them understand the havoc these storms can wreak. We’ve even got a Hurricanes flip chart and a Natural Disasters lesson plan ready for you to download. Though unrelated to the season, our Natural Disasters Spotlight also features our Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics topics, which can help explain to youngsters the recent rumbles in Colorado and Virginia. In addition, the spotlight includes topics on Tsunamis, Floods, Tornadoes, and Thunderstorms. We hope you find these resources useful!

Check out our timely collection of topics, interactive resource, and lesson plans to use during the Month of May and beyond! Spotlight: Practical Math You can count on us! This month marks the debut of a brand-new Spotlight dedicated to Practical Math. Explore topics like Comparing Prices, Customary Units, Division, Estimating, Graphs, Interest, Metric Units, Percents, Scale Drawing, Rounding, and Statistics. For K-3, there’s Centimeters, Meters & Kilometers, Inches & Feet, Basic Subtraction, Basic Addition, and Dollars & Cents. Spotlight: Sports and Fitness With summer fast approaching, there’s no better time for our Spotlight: Sports and Fitness. Build awareness of healthy habits with topics like Baseball, Body Weight, Obesity, Fitness, Football, Jackie Robinson, and Olympics. On BrainPOP Jr., you’ll find resources tackling Exercise, Bones, and Lungs. Plus, be fashionable and fit – print out a “Get Pumped With Moby” t-shirt iron-on. How do you reinforce healthy habits with your students? Post ideas and resources below.

We are thrilled to announce our Earth Awareness lesson plan contest winners! We hope you will check out these dynamic lesson plans and try them out with your students! A special thanks to all of our BrainPOP Educators, from Florida to Hawaii, who submitted a lesson plan highlighting BrainPOP and IMAX’s educator resources. For BrainPOP Jr. 1st place: “The Environmental Cost of Oil“ by Allyson Novy, 4th Grade Teacher, Lake Otis Elementary, AK 2nd place: “Earth Day Prezi” by Diane Aoki, Kealakehe Elementary School, HI For BrainPOP 1st place: “Tilting Temperatures“ by Jollyn Nolan, science teacher, Indiantown Middle School, FL 2nd place: “Top 5 Reasons for Earth Awareness“ by Beckie Share, Instructional Technology Specialist, Brookwood School, GA 3rd place: ”Environmental Problems and Solutions“ by Maggie, 6th Grade Teacher, Rugby Middle School, NC Congratulaions to our 1st place winners and their students, as they head out to an IMAX theater to enjoy Born to Be Wild 3D! Kudos to our 2nd and 3rd place winners, we hope you enjoy your complimentary BrainPOP subscription and package of safari promo goodies!  More prize details here! Earth Awareness month is winding down, so remember to check out our fabulous Spotlight full of resources to celebrate and teach about Earth Awareness. Interested in expanding your teaching skill set? We’ve got just what you are looking for, with Using Multimedia to Teach… Read the Rest»

Search & Rescue: Earth Awareness Resources from netTrekker Search & BrainPOP Wednesday, April 6, 2011 4:30 PM EST Duration: 1 Hour Our Tatum Murphy and netTrekker’s Danielle Abernethy team up to tackle Earth Awareness Month. See how these two resources facilitate meaningful participation in current event issues among your students. We’ll share creative activity ideas and samples of how to organize your resources so you don’t have to recreate year after year. RSVP: http://searchandrescue.eventbrite.com/