Tuesday morning started off with a presentation by Allysin Levy of BrainPop on using their movies to make your science lessons more interactive. I’ll be covering some of the highlights here as I  paraphrase and elaborate on the content of the presentation.

Movies are easy to find, and can be filtered by state, grade, and subject

Finding movies on BrainPop is easy through the use of the search engine that is built in, but many educators will find that the curriculum(new and improved) tool will help them find the content they are looking for along with it’s connections to the content standards for their state and grade level. A teacher can simply do a search for all of the topics that are related to their subject, grade level, and state standards. Nice! This makes it really easy to make BrainPop’s features a permanent fixture in your classroom.

Using the Video controls to make the movie more interactive

Once the topic is selected, a page with the movie appears. A few movie controls that have some immediate benefits on student learning include Pause, Zoom, and Closed Caption. While the zoom and closed caption are great for helping students take in the content, the pause button should not be overlooked. Using the pause button doesn’t need to be limited to stopping the movie in the midst of a classroom interruption. It should actually be used multiple times per movie to use the activities that are included on the movie page and to discuss important details that are covered during the movie.

Included activities help you build your lesson around the movies

On the same note, while you have the video paused, why not pass out some of the activity pages to help the students organize their thinking. The activity pages include worksheets with graphic organizers, vocabulary tools, and other handouts that will keep the students focused. You can find these linked below each of the movies on BrainPop.

Beyond the movies and activity pages there are several other fun features that students will enjoy checking out including comics, jokes, and tests(fun??). Amazing enough, students even have fun working on the tests which are included with each off the movies. Since they are online(and printable), as well as compatible with using remote controls such as Activote, students enjoy the interactive twist on testing their knowledge.