Our Primary Source activities have been updated as of December 13, 2020. You can learn more about the new features below.
IN THIS ARTICLE
What You'll Need
Primary Source Features
Answering Questions
Multiple Sources
Image Features
Transcripts
Viewing Primary Source in Fullscreen
Adding notes
Saving and Submitting Primary Sources
Answer Keys
Printing Primary Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
What You'll Need
- A School, Homeschool, or Teacher plan that includes BrainPOP (Grades 3-8+)
- Some features require an individual teacher or student account included in a School or Homeschool plan
Primary Source Overview
Primary Source activities accompany over 200 BrainPOP topics, challenging students to examine and interpret photographs, videos, diaries, and other documents. If a topic has a Primary Source, you’ll see the Primary Source tile on the topic page. To view the Primary Source activity, click on the tile.
Answering Questions
Primary Source activities offer free-response questions to be answered based on the primary source material given.
To answer the questions, click anywhere in the area with empty lines below the question, and put the answer where it says Enter answer here...
Answers can be longer than the number of lines visible. To expand the answer space to see all of a longer answer, click Read more.
To contract the answer space to hide the full answer again, click Read less.
Multiple Sources
Some Primary Source activities ask students to compare and interpret more than one primary source. When a Primary Source activity has multiple sources, each source will have a separate tab at the top of the activity.
To switch between sources, click the tab for the source you want..
Image Features
Some primary sources contain images. You can change the size of the image by zooming in, zooming out, or viewing fullscreen, using the tools above the image.
To zoom in or out, choose the magnifying glasses with the + or - symbols.
To view the image in full screen, choose the fullscreen icon.
To exit fullscreen, click the exit fullscreen icon or press the Esc key.
While zoomed in on an image, click and drag the image to move the image to see the part of the image you want.
To return the image to its original scale, choose the house icon.
Transcripts
Some Primary Source activities contain video or audio sources, or images of printed text. A Primary Source like that will have a Transcript to go along with it, below the video, audio source, or image.
To expand a transcript so you can read all of it, click Read full transcript.
To collapse a transcript, click Collapse transcript.
Viewing Primary Source in Full Screen
Primary Source can be expanded to Fullscreen to allow more space for viewing the source itself and writing answers.
To view the Primary Source in Fullscreen, click Fullscreen.
To exit Fullscreen, click Exit fullscreen or press the Esc key on a keyboard.
Adding Notes
Teachers and students can add notes in My Notes, underneath the source material.
To make a note, click Add New Note.
Write your note in the area that says Enter note here...
Click anywhere outside the yellow note to finish. You can add another note by clicking Add New Note again. Up to four notes can be added to My Notes.
You can edit any note you've already made by clicking on the note again.
To delete a note, click Delete.
If you are sure you want to delete the note, click Delete again.
Saving and Submitting Primary Sources
Students with individual accounts can save their work on a Primary Source and submit it to their teacher. The student cannot submit the completed Primary Source until they have saved it first.
To save work on a Primary Source, click Save.
A student can continue to make changes and save as many times as they need to by clicking Save again. When the work has been saved, you will see the Save button briefly say Saved!
When you are ready to submit the completed Primary Source activity, click Submit to Teacher.
Choose a class from the menu, and click Submit.
If the Primary Source activity is part of an assignment, the class will already be chosen and cannot be changed. Just click Submit.
You'll see a confirmation from Moby when the activity has been submitted successfully. To move on, click OK.
Answer Keys
Teachers with individual accounts have access to Answer Keys for Primary Source activities.
To see the answer key, click Show answer key in the bar underneath the activity.
Notice that you can assign a Primary Source activity directly from here by clicking Assign Primary Source.
When you show the answer key, the answers will appear in red in the area below each question.
To hide the answers again, click Hide answer key.
Printing Primary Sources
Teachers and students can print Primary Source activities. To print a Primary Source activity, click Print.
The Primary Source activity can be printed with your work shown in the answer spaces, and your notes included, or it can be printed with blank answer spaces. To print your work, click Print My Work. To print with blank answer spaces, click Print Blank.
If you've chosen to print your work, you'll be asked to enter your name, the name of the class, and the date.
Click OK to finish printing or click Cancel to make changes or wait to print another time.
Printing Answer Keys
Teachers with individual accounts as part of a School plan can also print the Answer Key to a Primary Source activity. To print the Answer Key to a Primary Source activity, first show the answer key and then click Print. Then click Print Answer Key.
The Answer Key will be printed with the answers to the questions shown in red.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I print or export a Primary Source image, video, or audio by itself?
No. Primary Source questions, answers, and notes can be printed, but the image, video, or audio sources themselves cannot be printed or downloaded separately.
Can I view and complete Primary Sources from a mobile device?
Yes! Primary Source activities are viewable in a mobile browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You can read more about which BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr. and BrainPOP ELL activities are compatible with mobile browsers here: Feature Availability on Mobile Browsers.
Like other student and teacher individual account features such as assignments, classes, and dashboards, Primary Source activities are not available in our BrainPOP GO Mobile Apps.