Excellent resource for introducing a new concept!

Submitted 9 years ago
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

I have been subscribing to Brainpop Jr. for 3 years and I am always very happy with it. The information is presented in a fun, kid-friendly manner. My students love Annie and Moby! Annie does a nice job of explaining things in a way that 8 year olds will understand. She also asks questions and lets you pause the movie for kids to answer it. Moby adds a lot of humor to the videos which the kids love! The movies aren't very long. I would guess around 5 minutes on average so it's great way to grab their attention and get their focus on the skill we will be working on. The extra applications are great too. The games are fun and educational. There is a wide variety of movies to choose from but I don't believe they have added any new movies in awhile. Since I have been using it for 3 years now, it would be nice to see some new movies added to the menu. However, the subscription cost is definitely worth it in my opinion. The students and I use it all year long.

How I Use It

I mainly use it to introduce my lesson. We always do the word wall, pop a joke, belly up and take both online quizzes. I have the kids use sign language to show me their answer when we take the quizzes. I love how it will read the question and answers for them. Some of the games are great for a whole group situation but not all of them. The memory/match ones for example are better if the kids can do the brainpop on the ipad. My subscription doesn't allow me to have access to all the movies on the app. I wish it did so I could assign any of the movies for the kids to do independently. But they do have quite a few free movies that my kids watch on the ipad. My students are always engaged when Brain Pop is on.