Wave Combinator: SnapThought Prompts
Have your students signed up for individual accounts? If you have a school-wide subscription to BrainPOP, students will be able to use our SnapThought ® tool to play the game Wave Combinator!
The SnapThought tool allows students to capture meaningful moments in their game play with opportunities for brief written reflection. Once students are logged in, the SnapThought tool will appear below any games that offer this capability.
During game play, students can click the SnapThought tool up to five times. A thumbnail, or “snapshot” is generated and stored on the bottom left of the screen. At any point in the game, students can click their snapshot(s), type a brief reflection, which may be a response to an open-ended prompt, and save or submit to the teacher’s account for you to review and respond to.
You can use the SnapThought tool to facilitate discussion around game play and strategies, or have students submit their snapshots to you for assessment or accountability. Here are a few ideas and prompts for using the SnapThought tool in Wave Combinator.
- In the first level of the game, make changes to the offset, wavelength and amplitude so that they’re different from how they were when the level started. Take a snapshot, and describe what changed when you adjusted each of these properties.
- Once you reach the first “Pulse” level (labeled with a P), take a snapshot before you make any changes. How is this level different from the previous levels? Make a prediction about what you think will happen if the two waves “run into each other.”
- When creating the example of the wave with an amplification of O, have students take a snapshot predicting what type of sound the wave will make, and what property of sound they think “amplitude” correlates with.
- After playing, take a snapshot. What’s something new you learned about waves?
