Illustrating Past Tense with Stop Motion Animation

As part of our grammar study during the second half of the year, we have been learning about verbs and regular verbs in the past tense. My students noticed that the pattern was we either add -ed or just a -d if the verb already ends in an 'e'. To build collaboration skills, planning skills as well as higher order thinking skills, I had them work in groups to create a stop motion animation illustrating how a verb changes into past tense. The children decided on their roles in the group, they worked together and had to problem solve when they didn't have the right camera angle for instance. I was quite impressed at their ability to work together and find ways to fix problems such as stacking books so the iPad could sit higher.

The children also had to figure out a way to represent time passing without any sound or words. Some chose to show the date changing on the calendar, one group used a clock, and others showed the sun and moon rising and setting.

We usediMotionHD which was easy for the kids to use and is a free app. However, I've also tried out Animate It which is not free but also an easy app to use.

I think they did a pretty good job considering this was their first try at stop motion animation! Here are their movies!