A BrainPop Reaction

BrainPop does have a lot of great features and covers a variety of subject areas, including music. I think it's a super site. I like the interaction, and all of its components. However, it's just under $1000.00 for a subscription. In my observation, I liked what I saw but that's a bit expensive. I think it would be worth it to invest in a school subscription, but for BrainPop and BrainPop Jr. it would cost even more. Also, in the agreement there is no guarantee that you will not catch a virus from the site either. Can a school afford to take that risk? As a future administrator, I would take that into consideration.

In this time of financial crisis I don't think my school would be willing to subscribe. I can ask, but the staff would have to buy into it for it to be beneficial and frugal. Anyway, this year's school budget has already been earmarked and spent. I think it is something to consider in the future! Music is what I was looking for, since it is what I teach, although I found the other subjects quite interesting for the student. There are workshops offered, tools, lesson plans and a newsletter for the teacher.

Not to go off on a tanget, but I really don't feel that the arts get the respect they deserve. There's more to music than music itself. In my classes, I teach academics through music. Maybe I'm an exception to the rule as a music teacher. I coordinate my lessons with the classroom teachers and help reinforce what they are learning, with developmentally appropriate lessons. I bring a different aspect to their learning.

There are songs about everything under the sun, but my CCCS are not connected to the CCCS of the academic subjects. This I do myself. It's a lot of work but I feel it's worth the effort, as long as my students benefit from it. I think they do! Making the connection relative to the student's studies gives my lessons a greater value and meaning, as well as develops them culturally.

The focus in my district this year is music and literacy. My lessons cover a lot of things involving literacy. They include the reading of words (lyrics), introducing new words that represent familiar and unfamiliar concepts, new meanings in context, dramatization, comparisons, speaking (singing), creative writing, morphemic analysis and contextual analysis, utilizing prior knowledge, cultural awareness, and listening to words, to name a few. Various skills are developed that co-exist with these strategies in my classroom as well.

I appreciate the resources available to the classroom teacher but wish there were more music resources that cater to the style in which I teach. I find them to be quite limited. Maybe there are resources that I'm not aware of, but my experience has been that it is scarce compared to the academic subject areas. Is it possible that this is an area of need that I should develop? I guess only time will tell.

http://www.brainpop.com/educators/blog/