Since the upcoming 5th grade SOL test has questions from the 4th grade science curriculum, fifth graders at Varina have been reviewing force and motion (SOL4.2). So today students in Ms. Gallahan’s class created animations showing potential and/or kinetic energy. First we discussed the differences between them. One way to get students to think about kinetic and potential energy is to ask them how to increase each one. How would you increase the potential energy of a toy car on a ramp? (Answer: make the ramp higher or make the car heavier) How would you increase the potential energy of a bow and arrow? (Answer: pull back farther on the bow string). How would you increase the kinetic energy of a runner? (Answer: run faster). After our brief discussion, the students were ready to make thoughtful animations. I posted the link to ABCYa! Animate on Google classroom and showed them how to use the tools. The students created their animations frame by frame and exported them as GIF files. Next, we posted them to Google classroom with questions for our classmates to answer. You can see their animations and questions here.
