Don't have a Brain POP Subscription? Here's another option.

 I'm lucky to have a school that pays for a Brain POP subscription - it's really expensive!!!

Scholastic has a pretty good alternative that's FREE!!!!  It's called Study JAMS! and in some cases I like it better.  

Tides is a topic that I think Scholastic does a better job.  They include the Sun, moon, Earth relationship, high/low tides but they also discuss Spring and Neap tides which is part of our state's standards.

I made CLOZE notes to go along with the video.  My students need to have a purpose for watching a video to be engaged.  We watch it together once then decide if we need to go back and watch additional times to get the notes completed or review main ideas.  It's not unusual to re-watch 3-5 times.  *5 for chemical/physical changes was our record!

Did I mention the best part about Scholastic Study JAMS?  You can download the video to play offline. 

There is a playback speed option too.  I use this when the facts are presented quickly.  Students like this option because it means less times they need to re-watch.

To introduce tides, I use a wordfind as a warm-up, watch the video and complete notes and then a crossword as either a wrap-up or as homework.  The next class we'll do a cut and paste/sort or a more advanced graphing activity  (I like this one from Middle School Science - I adapted it and used our local tide data.)

The only drawbacks to using Study JAMS! is there are not closed captions and they don't have all the topics BrainPOP does.  I still think it's a great alternative!