Literacy & BrainPOP; Empowering Kids to Shape the World Around Them & Within Them
Jerry Jones, M. Ed.
Education Leader | Transfr Workforce Manager | ACSA San Diego & Imperial County Principal of the Year | Providing Career Pathways & Upward Mobility for ALL Students
What is literacy??If you asked most educators and parents, most would likely say something to the effect of, “Literacy involves being able to read and write.”?This is an adequate definition; however, I believe that true literacy requires even more.?The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) defines literacy as
“the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.”
We all know that literacy is vital for student success; in school, in their daily lives and in their future careers.?As Richard Vaca, author of?Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum says, “Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives.”
So what elements make up effective literacy instruction??If you are an elementary school educator, you’ll know that to teach literacy, the following, backed by research, are considered essential elements that students need to have, to various degrees, taught in their classrooms: phonemic awareness and phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, high-level talk and writing about text.
BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. are excellent learning platforms for teaching and reinforcing hundreds of key skills in reading comprehension, language, phonics, and writing.??
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
“Studies have shown that explicit, systematic instruction in how letters represent sounds—phonics—is the most effective way to teach kids how to read words.” (Why Putting the ‘Science of Reading’ Into Practice Is So Challenging By?Sarah Schwartz )
BrainPOP provides a variety of engaging and fun videos on phonics and activities that reinforce student learning with quizzes, word play, make-a-map, and other related activities like “Talk About It,” “Pop a Joke” and more.?Additionally, there are excellent “Lesson Ideas” under the BrainPOP Educators section that provides information to support educators on all topics, including phonics and phonemic awareness
Fluency
Every BrainPOP topic features a set of up to six informational articles covering categories ranging from geography, biographies, nature, politics, and beyond! These high-interest, fact-filled texts invite students to deepen and extend their understanding of a topic while seamlessly practicing important reading comprehension skills such as making inferences, identifying main ideas and details, and comparing/contrasting.?Repeated readings of these texts and others within the classroom are a great way for students to build fluency and prosody.
Vocabulary and Comprehension
Education journalist Natalie Wexler in her book, "The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System–and How to Fix It, " wrote that
“cognitive scientists have agreed for decades that the most important element of reading comprehension is knowledge and vocabulary about the topic.
This is one of BrainPOP's super powers! BrainPOP , offers close to 1000 short animations that build background and explain challenging topics across the curriculum in ways that are meaningful to students. Making rigorous learning accessible to all students is what students need, and content and vocabulary are the keys that unlock knowledge for students of all backgrounds.
Recognizing the important role vocabulary plays in every area of the curriculum–from reading and writing to math, science, and more–BrainPOP and?BrainPOP Jr. ?provides engaging activities to build content-related vocabulary and helps students make connections.?For each topic, the same set of vocabulary appears in the different features and tools providing opportunities to use the words in different modalities (e.g., writing, drawing, speaking, etc.) to reinforce understanding.
Watch the following video, by Robert Miller , Professional Learning Strategist with BrainPOP, demonstrate how BrainPOP builds confidence and academic success with building students vocabulary in many engaging and fun ways!
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High-Level Talk
Learning happens when students are active participants, however, it’s difficult for students to participate when they lack background information or do not feel comfortable with their own knowledge on a certain subject matter.?Think about us, as adults, when someone asks us an opinion on something we know little or nothing about.?Most of us would be reluctant and uncomfortable to contribute, right?
Prior to students being able to engage in new material, collaborate and participate with their peers and engage in academic discourse in the ways that we know students learn best, educators need to provide the background knowledge and vocabulary that students require to understand novel concepts.?BrainPOP’s videos make information comprehensible for ALL students.
When students have a better understanding of the content and vocabulary, students will naturally be more engaged, more confident and the academic discourse between students, regardless of the grade level, will be so much richer!
Writing about Text
If one searches BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. for writing 118 movies (!) will appear to help explicitly teach writing skills.?Videos like: Text Structure, Writing a Paragraph, Writing with the Senses, How To Essay, Writing Process, Prewriting: Choosing a Topic, Story Conflict, Plot, Point of View all give students an amazing jumping off point to understand how to articulate their thoughts in writing.?And each of these movies, just like all of BrainPOP movies, come with numerous learning activities to actively support these lessons. And these topics are just for reading and writing.?As educators, we also want to have students write about topics that they are reading about.?Equipped with this background in writing, students will be apply their writing skills to all the topics and standard areas introduced in all grade levels through BrainPOP’s videos, related readings, vocabulary exercises, graphic organizers, games, etc. that accompany each and every movie.
When students have this strong foundation and deep understanding students will have all of the deep conceptual understanding to be successful in conveying their thoughts in the written word!
Literacy & BrainPOP
Let’s be sure that we are?empowering kids to shape the world around them and within them?by providing opportunities for them to become truly literate so that they can achieve their goals and develop their knowledge and potential!
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Other Related Articles by Jerry Jones on why BrainPOP is an?Essential?Learning Platform for Students:
Additional Resources:
Project Manager | Event Manager | Servant Leadership | Relationship Cultivator| Educator | Student | #projectmanager
2 年Thanks for sharing, such a great resource that I often forget about.
Transforming Education and Mental Health through AI, VR, and Gaming Innovation | Technology Leader for Social Impact | DARPA Alum ??
2 年You all do great work!