We’re about to welcome a brand new feature to BrainPOP UK: The FYI.

FYIs contain astonishing facts, figures and information, to be used as extension material to the BrainPOP UK movies. Every movie will soon have its very own FYI.

And, just for fun, we’re putting together a little viral movie that we want YOU to star in called “How many ways are there to say “For Your Information“?

It’s very simple.

1. Video yourself or create an image saying/displaying the phrase “For Your Information“.
2. Say it, shout it, whisper it, sing it, sign it, synthesise it. Write it on a blackboard. Create it in alphabetti spaghetti. Ask your parrot to repeat it. Any way you like (be creative but no naughtyness please).
3. Submit your video or image using the form below or by email to info@brainpop.co.uk

Some last things:

• It has to be your own original work. Don’t include any commercial music or anything as we won’t be able to use it.
• The final edit will be going on our Youtube channel as an embeddable, sharable movie.
• The best/most creative/funniest “For Your Information” will win a 6 month subscription to BrainPOP UK. Editor’s decision is final. Everyone who submits an entry will have a sneak peak at some of the FYIs in advance.
• The cut off date for submissions is 5pm 9th September 2010, so you’ve only got about a week to join in. Its premiere will be 13th September, alongside the FYIs.

So go for it! Tim, Moby & The BrainPOP UK team cannot wait to see what you can do.

On the Spotlight homepage you’ll find a Money Quiz, a Stocks and Shares Activity, and you can Learn More about Comparing Prices.

The topics we’ve decided to highlight for Managing Your Money include:

• Basic Probability
• Comparing Prices
• Communism
• Credit Cards
• Findng Percentages
• Interest
• Money
• Stock and Shares
• Stock Market
• Using a calculator

There are also some extra activities you can do on POP Spot!

Give them Credit – Head of ICT, Drew Buddie, has some inventive ways to teach students the value of money in the real world.

Creating a Budget – Learn how to budget properly using our Excel spreadsheet template.

Buy buy buy, sell sell sell! – Following real companies on the stock market.

And finally, we think we’ve managed to gather together just about every free resource available to do with financial literacy. If we’ve missed any, tag the ones you find with “managing money”. Budget-friendly Delicious links here.

If you’re unfamiliar with Delicious and feel you need some tips on how to use it, please click here for some help.

PLEASE NOTE: We don’t have control over any external websites you may choose to visit from this blog/widget. You follow links external to BrainPOP UK at your own risk.

The credit crunch has dominated headlines in the past year to such an extent that young people cannot avoid either reading or hearing about it, or worse, experiencing the consequences first-hand within their families.  In short, youngsters are hearing that financial experts got it so wrong that debts arising may not be paid for many years.

In the face of this, I have tried to redress the balance within my classroom by showing my Year 5 and 6 students how to carry out financial exercises that allow them to see the implications of their decisions and understand how to deal with money in everyday situations.

At the outset it’s important to understand that I am a Head of ICT in a school where I teach Year 5 to Year 13. I am not a teacher of Maths. However, I try to ensure my lessons are not just skills-based; they are contextualised so students see the application of ICT across a spectrum of situations. So, I’m going to outline a progressive blend of ICT-based activities I employ in the classroom which involve finances in some shape or form.

1. Shopping around

Introducing spreadsheets gives rise to many opportunities for discussing finances. I give students a spreadsheet showing the cost of a recipe and they see how a rise in the cost of an ingredient can result in the cost of the finished meal increasing. After a discussion of the implications of this when working within a budget, students research prices of ingredients using supermarket websites, learning the value of shopping around – important when parents may exclusively shop in one supermarket.

Using Disney’s superb business simulation, Hot Shot Business, students gain first-hand experience of what happens when they make crucial business decisions.  It lasts for six virtual weeks and gives students a good understanding of factors such as the repayment of loans,   competition, and supply and demand.  Students can take screenshots of financial updates at the end of each virtual week and incorporate the data into a spreadsheet of their own, creating live graphs of their progress. A combination of fun scenarios and engaging game play makes this one of my students’ favourite activities. It gives rise to many a ‘light bulb moment’

2. Planning for disaster

Placing students in a pressurised situation proves of great value when teaching the importance of money.  Stop Disasters Game is a website created by the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.  This simulation presents five natural disasters scenarios for which students are given Mission Goals.  To succeed, students are given limited funds to spend to ensure that as many people as possible survive the impending disaster.  The game climaxes with a disaster occurring and students discover how successful they were.

We discuss the finances involved during the game as students start to realise how much needs to be spent to keep people safe in vulnerable areas.  This leads to further discussion about why relief charities often need vast sums of money if they are to serve large areas of devastation.  Some of the discussions that have arisen from this exercise have been truly invigorating.

3. Top of the league

Finally, in terms of scale, no part of our lives seems to involve as much money as football currently does.  All of my students in Year 6 participate in Schools Fantasy League which is based on real life data attributed to the performances of English Premier League footballers. Pupils buy a team of real players and manage that team for the duration of the season.

The realism and meaningfulness of the data is the game’s secret weapon and there are many spinoff activities. It is easy to use and is a hugely engaging activity which ensures the investigation into finances continues outside the classroom and into the home.

As a teacher, what more could you ask for than that?

Hear more from Drew Buddie by checking out his blog, http://digitalmavericks.blogspot.com/ or following him on Twitter, @digitalmaverick

The September/October issue of Teach Primary is available in large WH Smith stores from 6th September.

A budget isn’t fixed in stone; there’s no punishment for overspending in one category and underspending in another. But, the more you manage to stick to your plan, the more able you’ll be to pay for the things you want and things you need.

Important to remember!

Fixed expenses include things like buying a weekly bus ticket for £8 or topping your phone up the same amount each week. Fixed expenses are unlikely to change so list these regular expenses exactly as they will be paid or you expect them to be paid.

Variable expenses – you need to make an estimate of what these expenses might be. These expenses are irregular and are not based on stuff you do or buy all the time. An example of a variable expense would be a cinema ticket, a lunchtime snack, or even new shoes for school.

Even though variable expenses may not be the same each month, it’s a good idea to provide a certain amount for them on a regular basis. Then, if they don’t spend that money in a certain month, it can be set aside. The money you set aside will add up and can be used later when another variable expense comes along.

We’ve prepared a Budget Template for you to work from in Microsoft Excel. This example will help you create a budget for the Autumn and Winter school terms; that way you can plan your spend in advance.

Click to download

But why not have a go at creating your own budget? Follow our example and you’ll soon be a budgeting boffin…

What you need:

• Financial newspaper or online resource. Here are a few online resources to pick from: London Stock Exchange, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, BBC, Guardian, The Daily Telegraph.
• A good friend!
• £10,000 each in IMAGINARY money

What to do:

1. Download this worksheet. Make sure you have a copy for yourself and a copy for your friend.


Click to start download

2. Watch the movie, Stocks and Shares, so you understand what makes a good investment when it comes to buying shares in a company.
3. With your friend, make a list of 10 companies from the FTSE100 in which you might consider investing the imaginary money. When selecting companies, you should follow the advice from Tim & Moby in the Stocks and Shares movie. (Read more about the FTSE 100 here.)
4. Do some reading around the 10 companies in your list and investigate how their stocks have been performing and what financial analysts predict for the future. You should be able to find all of this information in the Business sections of news websites.
5. After you’ve done some reading, you should each pick 5 of the 10 stocks and divide your imaginary £10,000 among the 5. You’ll most likely need your calculator for this so you don’t go over budget.
6. Use a free Internet site or a newspaper to take note of your five stocks in “Week 1” on the worksheet. (Note: Online, the numbers will constantly update during business hours. In the newspaper, they will represent the final tallies for yesterday’s trading period.)
7. A week later, preferably on the same day, fill in “Week 2” on the worksheet, noting the price of each stock. Using the formula provided, you should be able to work out whether your stock has gone up or down. Do this for the following 3 weeks.

At the end of the 4 weeks, you should be able to see which one of you made or lost the most imaginary money on the stock market.

Did the stock that you expected to do the best perform as you expected?

We believe it’s fun to get teachers involved at CPD workshops, not just talk at them – you wouldn’t expect pupils to just sit and listen, so why should you?

The CPD Workshop was led by Kim Conway, our BrainPOP UK Ambassador in Scotland, and boy does she love a bit of  audience participation! Engagement is, in part, about valuing the contribution and role of the learners, and bringing ‘a little something’ was a popular choice for Kim’s Dundee attendees. So, she set out a BrainPOP UK pack, chocolate and badge for each teacher for some competition fun. Welcome to our world, Dundee…

• Lucky badges – Everybody got the same badge apart from two lucky teachers; BrainPOP UK goody bags were handed over to smiling winners – it should teach folk to sit nearer the front next time.
• BrainPOP UK pen – Winning a pen turned out to be a bit of a flop with a mixed response from attendees – we guess a pen’s a pen in the end!
• Class set of BrainPOP UK badges – For coming to the front and answering a complete quiz, well done Darren!
• T-shirt competition – Well done Christine Howie from Clepington Primary School – you should have received your T-shirt by now so please wear with pride.

Quiz time! BrainPOP UK quizzes can be done in different ways, to reflect the different models of assessment and classroom management that teachers might use them. There’s more about this in our blog post, ‘Let’s get quizzical‘. Kim used the Graded Quiz option, using a ‘summative’ assesment model. The graded quizzes were good fun; attendees answered questions but didn’t get immediate feedback about whether they got it  right. It turns out, they got 8/10! Great result, but definately scope for improvement and more BrainPOPping!

Curriculum for Excellence – Another highlight for attendees was seeing our Curriculum Matching Tool, Deep Beep, as each topic is mapped to Curriculum for Excellence.

Tim and Moby support Curriculum for Excellence

We had some great feedback from attendees which we’ll definitely take on board.  Here’s a small selection of quotes…

Which parts of the CPD workshop were most useful?

“Going through the curricular areas to see what was available in terms of matching CfE outcomes and experiences”

“Demonstrating the movies and examples of quiz format. The curriculum matching tool is really useful”

“Associated movies and further links”

“The demonstration of how the site could be used within the school. Hands on approach”

What could be improved?

“Once we know how the quiz works/procedure for answering/giving wrong answers – more time can then be spent on becoming more familiar with other features”

“Don’t use up time trying to coax teachers up out of their seats”

How do you intend to use the skills/knowledge you have learned today in your school?

“I intend to pass on to other staff members and inform them of the free trial so they can take advantage of this fabulous resource”

“Will use it until September for literacy and Numeracy and let the children have a go and get feedback from them too”

“Pass on info and ask staff to trial – make a school decision based on usage and value”

“Share with colleagues. Poss use parts of some movies to introduce topics, stimulate discussion”

How might BrainPOP UK help you in future?

“Introducing topics or evaluating knowledge of topics”

“Allow children to back up the classroom learning after a lesson or as a teaching tool during the lesson”

“If movies are developed for infants would use it”

And, what important things did we learn for future CPD workshops?

Thank you to Louise from Dundee City Council for her help making this workshop happen and to Kim for her unyielding dedication to BrainPOPping.

What makes a great CPD session? What would you expect at a BrainPOP UK session? What horror stories can you share, and tips from the best?

Looking forward to seeing you at a BrainPOP UK event soon!

Tim Handley, a newly qualified Primary teacher and BrainPOP UK fan, has created this book entirely from his and others’ experiences. We’re also honoured that he picked BrainPOP UK as one of his recommended “Useful on-Line resources” for PGCE (Postgraduate certificate in education) students. We want to show our support in return.

We’ll leave it to Tim to describe his work.

“The PGCE Survival guide- the Essential guide to your teacher training.

Fed up of reading boring theory book after theory book?

Want to know what being a trainee teacher is really like?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get real tips, from real teachers?

Well, let me introduce the PGCE Survival Guide! It’s full of useful and practical hints, tips and advice from recent PGCE graduates and more experienced teachers covering every element of teacher training, from your first day at university, through the hectic world of placements to finding a job- we have it all covered!

You won’t find countless chapters about educational theory- just real tips and advice from real teachers. The PGCE survival guide also includes #pgcetipos – over 300 super useful hints and tips from the education community on twitter.”

You can download the book for free and/or order a printed copy for £6.91 from the PGCE Survival Guide incorporating #pgcetips page on Lulu.

Congratulations to Tim and the whole BrainPOP team wishes him every success with it.

On our intergalactic travels we like to keep an eye out for other interesting and stimulating Space resources that might help you bring your learning up to warp speed.

Our good friends over at www.teachingideas.co.uk (also http://twitter.com/TeachingIdeas/) have released a wonderful collection of free resources this month that they recommend budding astronauts check out (aimed at ages 5-11). You could easily combine many of them with our mixture of BrainPOP UK Space resources.

Remember you can also see all the other Space resources we’ve found as we search the Galaxy via our Starship BrainPOP weblink page:

Make it so, BrainPOPpers.

On the Spotlight homepage you’ll find a Galaxies Quiz, an Aliens Advanced Activity, and you can Learn More about the Life Cycle of Stars.

The topics we’ve bunched together (there were so many to pick from!) include:

• Aliens
• Apollo Project
• Asteroids
• Big Bang
• Black Holes
• Comets
• Galaxies
• International Space Station
• Life Cycle of Stars
• Moon
• Solar System
• Telescopes
• The Milky Way

There are also some extra activities you can do on POP Spot!

Astronaut Moby – Cut out and keep your own Moby doll

Life on Other Planets – Tim & Moby have been enjoying some space travel so it’s time you helped them out with their discoveries.

The Entire Solar System on Your Wall – Get your creative hat on and create our solar system (on a scale of 1 billion to 1!)

And finally, we’ve gone to places online that no BrainPOPper has gone to before to bring you a veritable feast of helpful Delicious links to dozens of space resources. Resistance is futile!

There's life Tim, but not as we know it!