What a great way to start the day! Parents joined students for their BrainPop movie presentations.We have been working on this project for three weeks! It all started with research. Students learned about their ocean animals habitat, life cycle, body, and diet. They were encouraged to add a fun fact as well.

Once they wrote down their research, students began the process of making a BrainPop movie. You might remember that BrainPop is a teaching tool I use frequently in the classroom. They offer a large variety of short animated movies on a broad range of topics. With a recent overhaul of their website came the addition of Make-a-Movie. To help students prepare to make a movie, I created a template that outlined the steps needed for each slide, such as choosing a background color and deciding what text or images were necessary. Here is what that looked like:

The makers of BrainPop are still working out the bugs, so sometimes the iPAD was the best option for students…

and other times the desktop was necessary. I was very appreciative with the students’ flexibility with this project, as several times as they were working on a slide, the slide was unable to be saved and their creations were lost. The students definitely demonstrated resilience!

After the slides were created, each student narrated their facts. I loved the enthusiasm and sense of humor they infused into their presentations. Enjoy! (There is currently no way to share the movies from the Brainpop site, so I have recorded the movies…I apologize in advance for the shakiness!)

Humpback Whale

Seal

Gray Whale

Barracuda

Sea Lion

Octopus

Sperm Whale

Blue Whale

Sea Horse

Tiger Shark