Using a 24/7 or home subscription for BrainPOP Jr.?  Parents and families can make movie viewing an active, meaningful learning experience for young children with the following tips:

Use the pause button. Whenever a new question appears on the notebook during a movie, the pause button turns red. This signals an opportunity to pause the movie and have your child activate prior knowledge, make predictions and inferences, and summarize what has happened. Pausing a movie allows you to assess your child’s comprehension and foster an active viewing experience.

Watch the movie full screen. We recommend watching the movies in full screen to allow your child to pick up visual details. The Full Screen button is on the left side of the window.

Use graphic organizers that work for your child. You may want to draw a graphic organizer on a piece of paper and add details as you watch the movie together. The Talk About It feature provides a discussion prompt and a graphic organizer that you and your child can complete together. The Print Notebook button allows you to print all the notebook questions that appear in the movie. You may wish to print them out in advance and give them to your child so that he or she can take notes during the movie.

Use the quizzes. At the end of every movie, you can assess your child’s comprehension through two leveled quizzes. The Easy Quiz is designed for grades K-1, with simpler language and questions, while the Hard Quiz is designed for grades 2-3. All the text on the quizzes is read aloud.

Integrate literacy with technology. The Read About It feature offers suggested readings that relate to each movie. We recommend you reinforce the ideas taught in the movie by making literacy connections with books.

Have older siblings teach younger siblings. One of the best ways to learn and retain information about a subject, is to teach it to someone else. Older brothers and sisters can easily use BrainPOP Jr. movies and features to instruct their younger siblings.

How do you use BrainPOP Jr. at home? We would love to hear and see your ideas! Submit your activities and lesson ideas to BrainPOP Jr. and we could publish them on BrainPOP Educators!