We recently hosted a fantastic guest webinar from Danny Nicholson of Thinkbank and The Whiteboard Blog fame.
There were so many great tips and inspiration on how to use your SMART or Promethean whiteboard software with BrainPOP that we wanted to direct you to the Elluminate recording of the webinar (download it then skip to around 16 mins to get started) and Danny’s excellent 19 page eBook, which you can download below.
Trust us, it’s free and well worth your time to own.
Tags: brainpop support, danny nicholson, IWB, promethean, smart, whiteboard
We were invited by Probationer Teacher Scotland, (part of GTC Scotland), a national support service provided to newly qualified Scottish teachers, to feature in their very popular “BlogSpot” section. This is a space where teachers in their probation year are asked to review products they love to use in class.
We turned to Jenny Harvey (@relativism), a class teacher from Kirkcaldy, Fife who presented a fantastic overview of BrainPOP. You can read the whole review below. Many, many thanks to Jenny for taking the time to provide this article. We hope you all enjoy it 
BrainPOP UK – What is it?
BrainPOP UK (http://www.brainpop.co.uk/) is a library of animated movies featuring the characters of Tim and Moby who explain a range of different topics in a clear and accessible way.
Movies are available across all curricular areas and the content is added to and updated all the time.
BrainPOP is something I discovered during my training and I have been using it for three years with a range of stages across the primary school. The children respond well to the characters and are always very impressed to hear that I have met Moby in real life.
Although it is a subscription resource, there are featured movies and free content available to everyone plus there is a mobile app which has a free featured movie every day. It is also possible to sign up for a free trial, which is how I first used the site.
Why do I use it?
In a nutshell: it is easy to access and use, the information is presented clearly and it is linked to Curriculum for Excellence.
The format of the BrainPOP UK site is extremely easy to navigate and clearly set out in curricular areas. The home page is bright and visual rather than having screeds of text and the search function does exactly what it should.
Curricular mapping tools, which are linked to Curriculum for Excellence, make planning an easier task and the interactive multiple choice quiz feature can be a useful formative assessment tool.
How do I use it in class?
I have used BrainPOP UK during teaching time, as an activity for a group and also as a research tool for directed research tasks. When used during teaching time I vary the order of the movie and quiz; sometimes I use both but at other times I use one or the other.
As I mentioned, the curricular mapping tool, which is called Deep Beep, makes planning easier as you choose the subject area and the Curriculum for Excellence level to match to your Experiences and Outcomes and then the topic of the movie based on the matching results. Movies can be paused, rewound or fast forwarded as required. This allows time for questions, reflections and checking understanding at any stage of the movie. I like to keep a notebook book file open to record any notes or observations during the movie.
The quiz can be very useful at the beginning of a topic and at the end to assess knowledge gaps and progress and inform future planning. I have also used the quizzes as an example for question creation lessons during which groups of pupils create their own quiz on a particular topic and these are then peer assessed. The quizzes can also be used with response units if you have these in school.
Quizzes and movies are not the only resources available on BrainPOP UK. There are associated activities, related topics and an FYI section providing additional stories and facts related to the chosen movie topic. The FYI sections are a particular favourite of mine as they often help to answer further questions and can help to generate other questions for investigation by pupils.
And there’s more…
Free CPD! BrainPOP UK provide free webinars which you can access online and from the comfort of your own home. If you need evidence of these CPD sessions they can also provide certificates of completion.
The BrainPOP UK staff, or BrainPOPpers, have always been outstanding in terms of customer service. They answer any questions promptly and they have even created a movie for me in the past.
I hope that this brief introduction has helped give you an overview of how BrainPOP UK can be used in your classroom. Remember it is free to try, the only software needed is a browser with Flash Player and if you need any support the BrainPOP UK team are just an email away.
Tags: BrainPOP review, GTC Scotland, Probationer Teacher Scotland, review, scotland
Hurworth Primary have been using BrainPOP for a few years now, and when I met Mr Dooris at the BETT show this year, he said everyone was really enjoying the site but when I got to the school I was shocked to discover Moby had been creating all kinds of mischief!
It seems Moby found out the school was having a project week to celebrate National Science and Engineering week and thought he would get in on the act…
As you can see Mr Dooris stumbled upon a mysterious set of orange footprints, weaving in and out of each classroom. At the end of each trail, in each classroom, was a question.
This stimulus gave the children the opportunity to research the answers and create their own BrainPOP type movies with what they had learned.
The selection below shows just a handful of the information-packed, brilliantly presented and funny movies the students made. Please take a few minutes to watch their work and leave comments, we know they’d appreciate it.
Bobby and Adam give us the run down on gravity:
Ella and Charlie tell us a great way to remember the order of the planets in the solar system:
Alfie & Sam wonder if plants can breathe and this leads to them to explain the ins and outs of plant respiration:
And the learning didn’t stop there. After making the movies, the children uploaded them to a collaborative site and watched and commented on each other’s work – what a great way to help and encourage classmates!
Not only did everyone learn some new science facts, by the looks of it they also worked on developing great presenting, writing and filming skills.
Tags: hurworth, moby visit, primary, school visit, STEM, student made movies, student videos
Jude, BrainPOP UK’s ELearning and Mobile Consultant, recently visited the RSA Academy in Tipton. Mr Naeem (@umerz1) and the gang have been using BrainPOP for nearly a year now so she was keen to see how the students and teachers use BrainPOP as part of the Opening Minds curriculum.
“RSA Opening Minds promotes innovative and integrated ways of thinking about education and the curriculum. Teachers design and develop a curriculum for their own schools based round the development of five key competences:
1. Citizenship
2. Learning
3. Managing information
4. Relating to people
5. Managing situations
A competence based approach enables students not just to acquire subject knowledge but to understand, use and apply it within the context of their wider learning and life. It also offers students a more holistic and coherent way of learning which allows them to make connections and apply knowledge across different subject areas.”
The “Opening Minds Curriculum” is used in over 200 schools across the country and the RSA Academy was one of the first schools to practice a dedicated Opening Minds curriculum. It has won many awards since, the latest being The Naace 3rd Millennium Learning Award.
21st Century learning and realsmart
Armed with my trusty iPad and clinking with badges I went to meet Mr Naeem and Mr Morton. Over a cup of tea they told me how they had been using BrainPOP with the realsmart Learning Environment. Realsmart works with Google Apps so it was great to see they’d already set up the BrainPOP Google App integration and were using the quiz results.
Some of the classrooms had ActivExpression devices so I was able to show them the Promethean Quiz integration. Staff and students were also using Vimeo to upload class videos to realsmart and the Maths Department has a twitter account to encourage Maths by tweet.
Opening Minds
I popped into Miss Josh’s Year 7 Science lesson. Observing the class really helped me understand why Opening Minds methodology is different. For example, one teacher may take the same class for a lot of their school time and teach across a number of subjects. BrainPOP is a valuable scaffold for this because it lets you access topics from across the curriculum.
Also, communication is a key skill re-enforced in every lesson. Even though we were in a science lesson, the students were thinking about the different ways information was presented. So if we were learning about atoms we might learn by reading about them or a more visual method (such as an animation!). Everyone got a chance to speak and say which way of learning suited the task best.
I asked the students if they were aware they were being taught in a different kind of way?
“Yes,” said one, “because the lessons are far more fun and less boring.” Another added, “Yes, because we’re very special.” Well said.
Miss Josh shares her thoughts on BrainPOP:
“BrainPOP is definitely something which can be used at key stage 4 in science as it really does cover the content for the AQA GCSE Science specification. But the use of BrainPOP doesn’t stop there. At key stage 3 the Academy delivers the Opening Minds curriculum and BrainPOP on many occasions has been used within the lessons. An example where it has been carried out is when a group of students were developing their logical thinking skills within the lesson. Students were asked to watch a BrainPOP video and then use their logical thinking skills and the information gathered from the video to complete a worksheet.
Students have also used Tim and Moby to help them evaluate communication skills. They watched videos and looked at how the characters communicate the information to their audience. Feedback from the students:
Student A: “Tim and Moby spoke at a steady pace”
Student B: ”The key words are always shown on the screen to help the students”
Student C : “The videos are really colourful making the people watch it because it is eye catching”
BrainPOP is definitely an education tool which can be used in a range of ways even outside the curriculum. It has also been used to help my tutor group when they ask questions about certain topics. After watching these videos it has helped the group to develop a range of class discussions.
BrainPOP is brilliant – it’s a great way for students to learn, the more you use them the more your students grow to love the characters. I now have year 7 students proudly wearing their Moby badges around the Academy!”
The last person I met was the librarian, Mrs Shakespeare, who told me the Online Safety and Referencing Sources would be just the thing for library inductions.
The flipped classroom
I found the visit really helped me understand why BrainPOP is good for student-centred and student-led learning, or the “flipped classroom” as Mr Naeem called it, where students have more control over their learning. Knowledge is important, and Tim and Moby are great for passing that on, but what students do with the knowledge is even more important. The fact that Tim and Moby do the first bit lets teachers concentrate more on the second.
Thank you RSA Tipton – I hope to visit again soon!
Tags: "RSA Academy", Academy, app, Birmingham, curriculum, google, Mr Naeem, Naace 3rd Millennium Learning Award, Opening Minds, opening minds curriculum, realsmart, RSA, science, visual learning, visual literacy
Mark Anderson (a.k.a. ICT Evangelist) and teachers at Clevedon School in North Somerset have been trying out the BrainPOP featured movie and app in various different classes throughout the school. He’s kindly provided a mini case study on how they’ve integrated BrainPOP into their vertical tutor groups.
“Clevedon School is a large 11-18 Outstanding School in North Somerset, just south west of Bristol. We operate a vertical tutor system where students from years 7 to 11 are mixed up in each tutor group.
So in any tutor group you normally have a few students from every year group. In our tutor times students regularly complete vertical activities, one of which is the use of BrainPOP.
We use BrainPOP because it is so easy to use, it really engages students of all ages (we complete the activities in vertical pairs) and the content is really clear and easy to understand.
“I really like it because it is fun and I always learn something” one student said to me from Year 9.
The BrainPOP free daily Featured Movie is a often a calendar aligned event. This is particularly good because it always means that whatever activity you are doing, there’s likely to be a relevant topic to the day.
More recently, Clevedon School have been trialling the use of iPads in education and I’m one of the trial leaders and have been using the BrainPOP iPad app in my tutor times.
The best thing here is that the content is right at the students’ fingertips – it’s right in front of them. Here, the content is brought alive and students can easily share and look at progress on each other’s activities as they move through. It certainly gets the students motivated and focused at the beginning of the school day.
We also provide opportunities for 6th form students to go back to their lower school tutor group to mentor students and free up the member of staff to do some small group work and mentoring with selected students. BrainPOP is a favourite resource for the 6th form students to use with the younger students.
Even with no planning or preparation it affords them the framework to run a session that everyone can engage with. It provides them with a high quality resource that they can rely on to deliver a message, support an area of the curriculum or spark a discussion.
The fact that BrainPOP uses seasonal themes and makes the most of anniversaries and other important dates means that they are always able to deliver something relevant and interesting to a group of students with diverse interests and educational needs.
I have seen it used to great effect to build confidence in 6th formers, giving them valuable experience and confidence in front of a class or in terms of public speaking. We all know how good it feels to be able to rely on a resource because we always know the quality is second to none.”
Mark Anderson, Head of ICT
Tags: @ictevangelist, clevedon school, featured movie, featured movie app, ipad, mark anderson, vertical tutoring
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.
Tags: currie primary, lesson idea, lesson ideas, using brainpop, what makes a good lesson
From time to time, we are incredibly lucky to hear how BrainPOP has profoundly affected a child’s learning.
Some kids find it hard to write. There could be any number of reasons for this but sometimes the writer simply needs inspiration. The following is a guest post from a teacher who describes how one of her reluctant writers found his muse in a certain robot called Moby…
“Hello! I am Miss Read (@missread10) and I am currently teaching a Year 3 class at a Primary School based in Ipswich, Suffolk. I am in my second year of teaching and ICT/VLE co-ordinator at my school. Following finding out about BrainPOP from my visit to the BETT show I was keen to use it in the classroom and to show my children about the technology I use.
So for my own benefit, I used BrainPOP for the first time with my Twitter account open for the children to come and post about what they thought and if I should continue to use it. Armed with some great feedback and comments (as well as an impromptu chat on Twitter with BrainPOP themselves!) I set my children the task to write about what they had learnt from the Rainbow movie we watched.
I have a very wide range of ability within my class ranging from labelling and sounding out words to those who produce reems of A4.
My superstar is classed as a P Scale writer – he usually verbally told our teaching assistant Mrs P what he needed to say and copied from the scribe. But following his exposure to BrainPOP the below is the most he has ever produced!
Since then, he has been writing and adding things in a variety of forms and styles around my classroom – even on my BrainPOP calendar!
Moby makes me feel happy
For as long as Moby (who apparently is a Baby Transformer who has come to learn about Earth) sticks around – I cannot wait to see what my superstar as well as my class (who are all stars) will produce next!”
This is Moby
The significance of this small but important step forward is not lost on Miss Read, nor us. It’s what we hope for when we construct BrainPOP – that at some point a child will make a break through that empowers them to progress and fall in love with learning.
And we don’t apologise for our emotional language – Moby making kids and teachers happy and successful in their learning is what we’re all about and it’s what motivates us in return.
If you have any teaching and learning tales you’d like to share with us – it really is a treat to see what your kids have been up to – please email info@brainpop.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you!
Tags: BETT, classroom, cliff lane, missread10, P scale, practice, primary, reluctant writer, twitter, writing
We were delighted and honoured to have so many kids visit our stand at BETT this year.
But we were especially delighted to welcome Fiona, Betsie, Jack, Trafford, Bayleigh from Woodlands Primary class 4h, onto the stand along with their teacher, Mr Handley (a.k.a. @tomhenzley and author of The PGCE Survival Guide). The kids gave a presentation about BrainPOP and finished off with a quick lesson on the Heart.
A sizeable crowd looked on as Mr Handley kicked off with a quick introduction before the kids took over:
Here’s a prezi Mr Handley put together to accompany their presentation: A Child’s View of BrainPOP and we’ve included the full transcript below too.
Mr H: Introduce what we are going to do – talk about BrainPOP, why the children love it and then do a mini lesson.
Bayleigh: BrainPOP is a really cool website that we all love and we use a lot in school.
Fiona: On BrainPOP there are lots and lots of videos, featuring our favourite characters – Tim and his Robot friend Moby.
Betsie: Each video starts with a letter written by a child, asking Tim and Moby a question.
Trafford: And Tim and Moby receive the letter and try and answer it in the video.
Jack H: The video is full of lots of useful information about lots of different topics.
Bayleigh: All the topics are interesting – many are linked into what we study in school.
Betsie: But others are about interesting events or generally super information, that we love to learn about.
Bayleigh: All of 4H love to watch Tim and Moby and often ask to watch Tim and Moby vidoes.
Jack H: We can also go on BrainPOP at home – which is super for exploring with our parents and helping them to learn things too!
Fiona: Often the videos are quite funny too and always try and with a joke or something silly.
Trafford: At the end of each video there is also a quiz to help us show what we have learnt.
ALL: WE LOVE Brainpop because…
Jack H: Because it can help us with our learning
Trafford: Because it is easy to understand.
Bayleigh: You learn things without realising.
Betsie: You can go on variety of different things and explore.
Fiona: You can watch things and they are fun whilst learning.
All: Our Favourite BrainPOP movie is…
Fiona: Fireworks – because it’s cool to see what is inside fireworks.
Betsie: Chocolate – because I love chocolate and it’s interesting to see how it is made!
Jack H: Electricity – because it is really interesting as it works each day.
Bayleigh: Heart – because it’s funny
Trafford: Simple Equations – as it’s really interesting.
Mr Handley finished up their presentation with a quick BrainPOP lesson using our Heart topic.
The kids’ favourite movies again for you:
Fireworks
Chocolate
Electricity
Heart
Simple Equations
A big thank you to Mr Handley and all the kids from Woodlands Primary School for your clear dedication to BrainPOPping. We have your letters and promise to answer them soon!
And finally, it’s no fun visiting the BrainPOP stand unless you get a hug from a big orange robot. Moby was happy to oblige.
Jack, Trafford, Bayleigh, Fiona and Betsie meet Moby
Tags: 2012, BETT, chocolate, electricity, fireworks, handley, heart, lesson, presentation, primary, simple equations, woodlands
We always enjoy seeing how schools use BrainPOP so when Ms Tonks of Shireland Collegiate Academy said it would be okay for Jude (our BrainPOP Elearning & Mobile Consultant) to visit the school she jumped straight into her Moby-mobile. Here’s how she got on…
Before lessons started for the day, we dropped in on a Year 9 class using BrainPOP in tutor time. I had imagined the class would be watching the daily featured movie but on arrival I discovered that BrainPOP fits into the learning at Shireland Academy in a different and useful way.
Shireland use a unique curriculum model called ‘Literacies for Life’. This is a project-based learning approach that focuses on a common theme throughout all subjects for a given period of time and uses dynamic learning to bring the subject to life. The theme this month is ‘Over the Top’ – learning about WWI.
Ms Dhillon ushered everyone into the room and we watched the WWI movie followed by the quiz. To add a fun twist to the quiz, after each question students held up a coloured card to show their answer – A, B, C, or D – and Ms Tonks and Ms Dhillon stood at the front and could see which colour was the decision of the class.
The class answered nearly all the questions correctly – impressive how switched on everyone was considering it was only 9 am! No sooner had we finished the quiz than the bell went and everyone rushed off to their first lesson. I couldn’t help wondering what a Science lesson on the theme of WWI would be like (making mustard gas?).
Having everything planned on the learning platform was helpful in squeezing learning into every little bit of the day. The eLearning team have embedded links to the BrainPOP movies (and other resources) being used in each lesson so they’re easy to find for teachers and students. They’ve even animated their own BrainPOP access buttons!
The elearning team kindly showed me a few more innovations they use to get the best out of their learning platform and resources:
I hope I’ll get the chance to call in and see Shireland again soon, it’s always good to get stocked up on good ideas to pass on to other BrainPOP schools. Meanwhile, I hope we can persuade Shireland students to blog for us in the future…they certainly have a lot to write about!
Tags: apps, brainpop quiz, learning platform, Literacies for Life, quiz, school visit, shireland, Shireland Collegiate Academy, WWI
Today we’ve invited Louise and her son J to share how they use BrainPOP at home. Having been an avid BrainPOP fan for well over a year J was super keen to tell us why he likes BrainPOP. We’ll hand you over to his Mum to take up the story…
“As a child who is always keen to investigate topics and, at the same time, is an enthusiastic technology user BrainPOP UK is a daily ‘must visit’ site.
J is a boy with motor coordination and planning difficulties (dyspraxia), but the site is completely accessible to him. A few clicks of the mouse and the odd bit of typing and he’s able to get to where he wants to be – independently.
J loves to start with one topic and, by using the intelligent search, he will choose a movie to make his first ‘viewing’.
As he watches Tim and Moby he chats along with them and answers their questions. For J this is an important part of learning. He needs to see the pictures but also see and hear the words too.
Frequently he will laugh heartily at the content and, of course, he has some favourite movies (Bogies is his all time number 1!).
He loves to share the movies he likes with his pals and they will all take turns to answer the POPQuiz at the end. Judging from their reactions, it’s a great hit for children from 5 to 13.
At the start of each week, to help J with his planning and organisational skills, we talk about topics we’ll be covering or places that we are going to visit. J will carry out preparation work by seeing what BrainPOP can tell him.
Sometimes, BrainPOP is used to consolidate learning done in other settings. For example, in the picture above, he was checking up on Sir Francis Drake by watching the Pirates movie. We’d been on holiday the week before and visited Buckland Abbey, which was Drake’s home.
Whilst on holiday, J used the iPhone app to see the daily free movie when he wasn’t out building sandcastles. It too is simple to use and contains the same great graphics the website has.
The best thing about BrainPOP for J is that it is completely his domain. The content is informative, fun and he drives his own exploration and learning. It keeps him engaged and Tim and Moby do not get fed up or complain about repeating themselves.
He seeks out the new movies and is keen to share his new found knowledge with us.
What a lovely way to learn!
PS: J, as a piece of extension work for his blog post above, designed it as a PDF Independent Learning with Tim & Moby designed by J and also recorded a short Audioboo:
Tags: bogies, brainpop app, dyspraxia, independent learning, mobile learning, pirates, SEN
