4th Grade Moon Animations
The phases of the moon give us a beautiful calendar in the sky, but sometimes that calendar is difficult to read. Is the first quarter when the right or left side is lit up? Is the moon waxing or waning? Answering these questions takes a bit of perspective, and that’s why animation is an excellent way to broaden students’ understanding of these processes, especially if the students create the animation themselves. Third graders at Varina Elementary used ABCYa! Animate to create animated .gifs of four moon phases: (1) new moon, (2) first quarter, (3) full moon, and (4) last quarter (SOL3.8a). In order to be accurate, the students had to do some research. They had to find out which direction the moon orbits the Earth and what the moon looks like from Earth at different positions. Once they had their facts, they illustrated the position of the Sun, Earth, and moon for each phase, showing what we see from our perspective here on Earth. Next they exported the four images as one animated .gif file. Then they posted their animations to Google classroom with a question for their classmates to answer. After watching each other’s animations and answering each other’s questions, these third graders have a much clearer understanding of how the moon phases happen and the order in which they occur. This was actually submitted as an H21 lesson, which means you can download the lesson plan here. Student samples: Layla Obey and Erin Hardin.