First Impressions of BrainPOP

Guest Blogger Hollie Winfield Shares Her First Impressions of BrainPOP

Posted by cemignano on

Check out this blog for a teacher’s first impressions of BrainPOP: Hollie Winfield is a second year graduate teacher working in Melbourne’s CBD. Her school is Carlton Gardens Primary School in Victoria, Australia. It is a multicultural school focused on educating students in an engaging manner that incorporates real life and innovative experiences. Her school recently presented to a collection of teachers from around Australia and overseas that were participating in the ISTE Australia Study Tour. Each classroom teacher demonstrated their use of ICT in their classrooms.  As a new BrainPOP user, Hollie shares her reflection below.

I have started using BrainPOP as a tool for introducing my mathematics lessons. The short sharp videos are useful for engaging students in new concepts or consolidating prior knowledge before they complete a set task. I use my interactive whiteboard to display the videos and activities when I am working with the whole class, but sometimes the students themselves access the website using our classroom laptops or our school iPads.

One example of a lesson in which I used BrainPOP involved a basic subtraction video that I played at the beginning of the lesson. My students are working at different levels with their subtraction understandings and the video touched on all of these in an engaging, yet simple manner. It was beneficial for those students who were still developing their counting back skills, those who were consolidating those skills, and those who are applying their skills to more difficult problems.