TSN-2 and My BrainPOP: SnapThought Prompts

TSN-2 and My BrainPOP work together! Have your students signed up for My BrainPOP? If so, students will be able to take snapshots during TSN-2 game play with the SnapThought tool! MyBrainPOP is available to BrainPOP Educators with 24/7 district- or school-wide subscriptions, and is easy for you to sign your students up. Check out our My BrainPOP FAQs for more info.

You can use the TSN-2 snapshots to facilitate discussion around game play and strategies, or have students submit the snapshots to you for assessment or accountability. Here are a few ideas for using the snapshot tool in TSN-2:

• Have students take a snapshot of their responses during selected activities and use the snapshot image to help them talk about what they’re learning. Encourage students to share their responses with a nearby partner, reading the responses on each other’s screens and discussing their thinking. Students may want to revise their responses after the discussion, or complete a peer editing process to check for errors before submitting their responses to you.
• Ask students to take a snapshot of their responses to the open-ended questions before hitting the “send” button. These prompts are given twice during the game: The first instance is in the Email to Selena on Interview Preparation, and the second instance is the Response to Victor Email, in which students are prompted to give examples of 2 strong and 2 weak questions. Students may want to revise their responses after the discussion, or complete a peer editing process to check for errors before submitting their responses to you.
• Poll the class and ask them to share their answers. For example, after the Response to Victor Email, ask students to provide examples of what they felt were strong and weak questions using the snapshot tool.  What makes some questions more valuable to the employer than other questions? What are the qualities of a strong interview question?
• Upload the snapshots to your class blog, Google Drive, or an online photo-sharing tool. Determine whether students should submit their work privately so that only you can view it or make it available for their classmates to read and comment on.

Additionally, you can use the following specific prompts for students to instruct them when to take snapshots and how to use them to reflect on their learning:

Day 1 Game Play

1)   How to Attract Teens to TSN-2 (White Board Jam) – After making a decision on what ideas to eliminate and before clicking done, take a snapshot of the whiteboard screen.  In the caption, choose one of the ideas you decided to keep and explain why it would appeal to teens.

2)   Everyone’s Ideas (Idea Centralizer) – Take a snapshot of the page you did best or worst on.  If the best one, explain what strategies you used to complete this page.  If the worst one, explain what strategies you could have used to complete this page correctly.

3)   Summary Competitive Analysis (Text Analyzer) – Before clicking “Done,” take a snapshot of the section that you feel is the best idea for advertisers (Online Sports Game Centers, Social Media Sites or TV Shows).  Explain why you feel it’s the best idea using (or citing) information you have flagged in the activity.

4)   Time to Choose (Choice E-mail) – After clicking “Send,” take a snapshot of the activity.  If you chose the right idea, describe why one of the other choices is not a good idea for attracting teens. If you chose the wrong idea, choose another one and describe why you feel it would the best idea for attracting lots of teens to TSN-2.

5)   Home Team (Context Clues Selector) – Take a snapshot of the feedback screen and describe a strategy that can help find the meaning of a difficult word.

Day 2 Game Play

1)   Summary Market Analysis (Text Analyzer) – Take a snapshot of screen before clicking “Done.” What’s something new you learned about teens in each of the specific age groups?

2)   Show Ideas from Teens (Idea Centralizer) – Take a snapshot of one of the pages after you get your right and wrong answers.  Take a look at it again and explain whether or not it’s a good idea for TSN-2.

3)   TV Show Analysis (Ideas Connector/Distinguisher) – Take a snapshot of your feedback screen with the stars.  Describe what information would be helpful to a new player before trying this activity.

4)   Extreme Sports (Context Clues Selector) – Take a snapshot of the screen after answering both questions for one word.  What’s one thing you would add or change about this activity?

5)   Your Decision –Topic (Choice E-mail) – Take a snapshot of your email response and make a case for another topic choice for the new show.