We like to send our school subscribers little challenges every now and then as a little reminder that learning is always fun with BrainPOP. And when subscribers submit completed treasure hunts, word searches, and other challenges, we like to reward them with BrainPOP goodies because we’re just nice like that 
So when Jennifer Finlayson’s Primary 6 class sent us their completed word searches we made sure to send them a selection of the very best BrainPOP badges (modelled below) as a reward for doing such a good job.
Of course there are other things just as important to us as making learning fun!
For one, we value customer feedback. And another, we love hearing your tales of good classroom practice. We simply can’t maintain our high standards if we don’t listen and learn from you.
To this aim, and because Currie Primary School are such long term BrainPOP customers, we asked Jennifer if she could give us a run down of a typical BrainPOP lesson and she happily obliged.
My favourite movie is: all of them!
Because: there is such a wide range of movies I always find one to suit my needs!
My class like: Tim and Moby
Because: they think they are funny and they like that the movies always follow the same format
Brief description of a typical BrainPOP lesson
Introduction/background:
A lesson about synonyms and antonyms. These are new concepts to the children and, although they might understand the concepts, they are unfamiliar with the terms.
Getting Started/Preparation:
- Ask the children to discuss in pairs what they think a synonym (then antonym) is.
- Give clues i.e. syno means same, nym means name.
What we did:
- Once the pupils had generated definitions for each and we had discussed these, they worked in pairs to come up with as many examples as they could, and recorded these on mini whiteboards.
- We then discussed these as a class to produce a class bank of synonyms and antonyms.
- Then we watched the BrainPOP clip to reinforce what we had learnt, and this also went beyond our learning to touch on homonyms – which was useful as, although we hadn’t discussed it, this was planned for a later lesson.
Outcomes:
Pupils had a good understanding of synonyms and antonyms and were able to provide examples.
What’s the best thing about being a BrainPOP school?
- A wide selection of resources easily available and easy to search for on the site.
- The clips really appeal to upper primary children and often provide a great ‘hook’ into learning at the beginning of a lesson.
- We also enjoy your seasonal/topical clips, for example Halloween, and use these as stand alone stimulus for discussion.
Thank you BrainPOP!
If you’ve got any teaching and learning tales you’d like to share with other schools, please send them to info@brainpop.co.uk or post a comment below.
— Charlie Deane (@charliedeane) 
