3rd Grade Elapsed Time Comics
Third graders at Varina Elementary have been learning about elapsed time in one-hour increments (SOL3.11b). Today, students in Ms. Long’s class created comics to show their own elapsed time math problems. First we discussed different situations that take several hours, like a sports game, a special event, or traveling. Each student thought of an idea, then we opened a 3-panel comic in StoryboardThat. I showed them how to add a background scene to each frame and how to use the “Edit Scene” button to change things in the background. Next we added characters, customized their hair and skin colors, and changed their poses and facial expressions with the “Edit Pose” button. Finally we added speech bubbles to each frame: the first one told the starting time, the second one told either the ending time or the duration (like 2 hours), and the last one asked a question about the elapsed time. We took a screenshot of our comics and posted them to Google classroom. Students answered each others’ questions in the comments. You can see all their comics here.