Poppin' with BrainPop!

Fourth grade studies Westward Expansion as part of their Social Studies curriculum.  It's a very interesting topic, especially when you do a lot of learning about it with BrainPop!

The kids start off by watching a few different BrainPop movies, made even easier because the kids each have their own BrainPop accounts, so teachers can assign the movies to the kids that way.  From there, they do a ton of research, note taking, brainstorming, and organizing.

Next comes the writing.  This is one of their first formal essays of the grade, and they can choose any topic from the subject area - Gold Rush, Lewis and Clark, Louisiana Purchase, etc.  This part takes a lot of thought, as the kids learn to turn their notes into sentences and the sentences into well-crafted paragraphs.

Typically, at this point, you'd think that the last step would be to type or write a final copy of the completed essay.

But you'd be wrong.

Enter BrainPop!  It's Make-a-Movie Time! 

How does it work, you ask, when you are looking at a final draft of writing?  That, my friends, is for another post.

This post came to be because this week the kids got to explore Make-a-Movie for the first time.  And it was a lot of fun!  The features in Make-a-Movie (once again, assigned thanks to individual BrainPop Accounts,) allow kids to create their very own BrainPop, from letter to labels, backgrounds to images.  

And they are very, very cool!