POPtalk

News. On the TV, on your phone, online, on the radio, in newspapers, in the corridors at school, in your classroom? Of course!

With every BrainPOP  movie we make, we do our best to answer the question posed and, in doing so, we aim to encourage and inspire the natural curiosity that kids of all ages have in the world around them. We understand that learning can never be confined to a classroom. Much the same as discussing current affairs isn’t ever confined to Jeremy Paxman and crew in the Newsnight studio.

“One of the great things about BrainPOP UK is that it’s really up to date. When explaining world events in class, I often use one of the clips to help illustrate the lesson.”

Ken Brechin, Head of Science, Cramlington Community High School

In the past month we’ve endured royal wedding fever, seen the SNP achieve a majority in the Scottish Parliament, witnessed a devastating earthquake in southern Spain, and heard the news last week that there was a bomb attack in Pakistan.

BrainPOP can help address the questions kids ask about what they see, hear and read about in the news. It’s a great way to encourage children to not only investigate an issue themselves but to form their own opinion about it and confidently discuss it in class.

Here are a few tips on how to take advantage of the broad range of topics available to support (and promote) class discussion:

1. If a major world event has occurred and your class are asking questions, why not try a key word search? Here’s what we turned up with a couple of keyword searches this morning: Terrorism and Earthquakes. Try for yourself and see. If a topic doesn’t appear that you think should have, let us know and we’ll investigate.
2. Subject categories are another way to look at a general area of interest that could be relevant. If we consider the same themes, there are two categories which immediately spring to mind: Citizenship: Living Together in the World and Geography: Features and Processes
3. Looking at the related movies lets kids make their own learning journey. Let’s take the Queen as an example. A quick glance and we see related movies ranging from current affairs to history, United Nations, Queen Elizabeth I, Magna Carta and British Empire. A veritable feast of thought-provoking and cross-curricular topics.
4. Deep Beep, our curriculum matching tool, can show you how to easily fit a lesson based on a news event into the curriculum you follow. If you follow Curriculum for Excellence for example, try drilling down to a social studies objective. Likewise, if you follow KS3 QCA Schemes of Work, drill down to a PSHE & Citizenship objective.