
Movies and More With August’s CBE of the Month
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For part two of August’s Certified BrainPOP Educator of the month series, Andrea Alvarez shares how she encourages educators to take advantage of all BrainPOP has to offer. Read on to learn about why Andrea feels it’s important to look beyond the BrainPOP movies and take a look at her professional development resources.
Beep, beep! Moby and his friends are here to help all learners.
I started using BrainPOP about 7 years ago. My students and I loved the movies and we had discussions after the movie. It wasn’t until two years ago that I started using BrainPOP and all its resources. I noticed that my students were doing great in class and I started seeing more “A-Ha” moments. They were getting the concepts being taught in class more easily, not surprisingly, since BrainPOP implements Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most of my students are bilingual where English is their second language and with the help of Moby and his friends they are engaged in class. I am lucky to have a full subscription. With a full subscription I am able to create a teacher account and create classes. Since I teach multiple grades, I created a class for each period. Once I created the classes and students’ accounts, my students are able to submit their quizzes, Make-a-Map, games and activities. As a teacher I am able to see the students’ progress and all the activities that students complete. My goal is for everyone that has a BrainPOP account to use all its resources in order for their students to benefit from such a hands-on program.
My school is located in a community where 85% of the population consists of English Language Learners. It is hard for many parents to help their children with their academics because they don’t speak English. They can encourage them to do well in school and they can help them to get the resources that they need to do better in school. BrainPOP is one of the best resources that parents can provide for their children at home to help with different subjects.
BrainPOP is a great resource for all students and families especially for ELL students, students with disabilities, and students at risk. As an educator and facilitator I see BrainPOP as a great tool for all teachers to integrate in their classroom. I would love for all students to use the different resources that BrainPOP has to offer.
BrainPOP is more than a movie! It is a such a rich program. Students can benefit from using the Make-a-Map, GameUp, Related Reading, and Primary Resources. My goal is to share with teachers the different resources that BrainPOP has to offer in order for them to implement the use of BrainPOP and do so by providing Professional Development and Lunch and Learns at my school. In addition, I love to provide workshops at the NYCDOE Tech summit and present my session, BrainPOP – More Than a Movie!
At this year’s summit, the session was great hit. Surprisingly a lot of teachers didn’t know about the other features on BrainPOP. The teachers that were using BrainPOP in their classroom were using the movie and the quizzes only. They were not aware on how to use Make-a-Map, GameUp and the other resources. They didn’t know that BrainPOP Educators exists. A small population of teachers didn’t know about BrainPOP at all, and they were super excited to see the movies and the quizzes as well as the rest of the resources. (Here are links to my agenda and presentation.)
I also enjoy presenting BrainPOP workshops to parents so they can use this resource at home with their children. Parents can use the movies as reinforcement from class materials. They’re able to sit down with their children and watch a BrainPOP movie, take the quiz, and play some of the games together.
My goal as an educator and facilitator is to help teachers to get on board with ALL of BrainPOP’s features – that way more kids will be able to use BrainPOP to the fullest and will benefit from it!