Ideas for Using BrainPOP Jr. to Teach Math
BrainPOP Jr. can help you teach and reinforce hundreds of key skills in math: number sense, operations, geometry, measurement, data, graphing, and more! Here are some ideas to get you started:
Use the interactive BrainPOP Jr features as a math center. Project the related movie topic’s Game, Draw About It, and/or Talk About It on your interactive whiteboard and have students work independently or cooperatively to complete the activities. If you don’t have an interactive whiteboard, students can explore the activities on your classroom computers.
Use the paper-based BrainPOP Jr. features as a math center. Print out the Activity and the Talk About It features related to the movie topic and have students complete them in math centers or stations.
Use the Word Play to help children use math language. Each movie has a Word Play that contains key words and their student-friendly definitions. Students can choose a word to explore. Draw, write, or create a skit about it. You can print the Word Play activities out and make copies for students to keep in their notebooks. You can also add these words to your own class word wall. You can use the features to assist students in math talks or math journaling.
Use the Write About It feature for math journal pages. Print out the Write About It activities related to the all the relevant math movies for your unit of study. Staple or bind them together to create a math journal. You can model how to respond to the open-ended prompts by projecting the Write About It page and typing directly into it.
Use the Draw About It feature to help students make visual representations for math problems. Project the Draw About It from any movie and use it to illustrate the math prompt provided or make your own! When students are solving quiz problems and get stuck, use the Draw About It to help them represent the math concepts visually.
Use individual dry erase boards to have students solve quiz problems. You can make a class set of these very inexpensively by purchasing a piece of shower board or tile board at your local home improvement store and having them cut it into 30 one foot by one foot squares. Give one board to each student and have them show their work for each quiz question, and write the letter of the answer they choose. Instruct students to hold the boards up for you to check and address any misconceptions.
