Fourth graders at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about electrical circuits (SOL4.3b), so today, students in Ms. Waltz’s class created animated circuit diagrams using ABCYa! Animate. First, we reviewed the parts of a simple electrical circuit and how the parts work–batteries, switches, and objects that turn on. We discussed a variety of electrical objects so everyone didn’t draw the same one (lights, radios, toys, televisions, computers, washing machines, ovens, robots, etc.). If your students need some extra help with circuits before doing this activity they can practice building their own here, here, here, or here. Next, we went to ABCYa! Animate, and I explained the process of creating the animation: (1) draw the complete circuit with an open switch in the first frame, (2) slowly close the switch in the next few frames, (3) show the flow of electricity however you like, (4) turn on your object in an interesting way. Finally we saved our animations as .gif files and shared them on Schoology. You can see them all here.

Fifth graders at Varina Elementary have been reviewing potential and kinetic energy (SOL4.2), so today, students in Ms. Primrose’s class created animations to illustrate these concepts. For this lesson, we used a different way to animate that I learned about from a fellow ITRT, Michael Price. He showed me how to create an auto-playing animation with Google slides. First, we reviewed potential and kinetic energy and brainstormed several examples (pulling back on a bow and arrow, squatting before a dive or a basketball throw, twisting a rubber band, squashing a spring, blowing up a balloon before releasing it, etc). I explained that we would be animating both the potential and kinetic energy of an action, so the students needed to choose one they found interesting. Next, we opened a blank Google slide, and clicked the Background button. The students used the built-in Google image search to look for a background that would fit their action. Then we added Shapes to make our characters and objects. We copied the slide (right click > Duplicate slide), and moved the shapes around slightly to make it look like the characters and objects were moving. We continued copying slides and making adjustments until our animations were complete. Now it was time to add the animation magic! We clicked File > Publish to the web and chose “Auto advance slides every second.” We also clicked the two boxes so that it would start automatically and repeat when it was finished. When the link appeared, we changed the number that came after “delayms=” to 100 to speed up the animation. You can see their final projects here.

Fourth graders at Varina Elementary have been learning about the phases of the moon in Science (4.8c) and about fractions in Math (SOL4.2). Today students in Ms. Belcher’s class illustrated the fractional parts of the lunar cycle with ABCYa! Animate. First we divided the lunar cycle into eight parts and discussed the fraction representing each part. I pointed out that some of the fractions can be reduced, and they even provide names for some of the phases. For example, 2/8 of the cycle is called the first quarter because it is actually 1/4 of the way through. On each frame of their animations the students illustrated a different phase of the moon and wrote its corresponding fraction (new moon = 0/8, waxing crescent = 1/8, first quarter = 2/8 or 1/4, waxing gibbous = 3/8, full moon = 4/8 or 1/2, etc). We used the copy cat button to make sure that the moon stayed in the same place so that when the animation played, it would look like the phases of the moon were really happening. You can see them all here.