Many people are familiar with Brainpop, the company that provides short, well-produced online educational movies that are done with audio and animation.   The same company has Brainpop Jr., which shows movies that use more simple English (though the regular movies are certainly accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners) and provide closed captions.  In addition, there is Brainpop en Espanol, which has many of the regular Brainpop movies in Spanish.

All of these services are subscription-based, though each of the three  sites has several free sample movies, and Brainpop Jr. had been free for a year until this May 1st.   I also have quite a few free Math movies under the Math category on my English Themes For Beginners and Early Intermediate page.  These are made available to the public through a textbook publisher.  You’ll find other free Brainpop movies scattered throughout my website.

I think it’s definitely worth the money if you are teaching English Language Learners a specific content class, like the U.S. History, Geography, and World History ones that I teach.  However, I would not pay for a subscription if I did not teach those content areas in addition to my regular ESL classes.  There are just so many other free materials available.

If you are interested in a subscription, though, they have a pretty attractive deal for all three services that expires on June 1st.  It might be worth checking-out.  Even if you’re not, it’s worth having students watch the free sample movies.  My students get a lot out of them.