Inquiry
How can stop-motion animation be used to support second grade students understanding of place value?
Learning statement
Technology can increase students’ interests in Math.
Math is a logical subject for elementary students. Some students can not express math concepts, and some students can not understand abstract math problems. Then, students begin to lose interests in math learning. However, by combining technology with math, students can become more interest in learning Math. Because utilizing stop-motion animation in the classroom helps children become more involved in what they are learning and gives them an opportunity to be creative, which ultimately helps boost student engagement and understanding of material. Children have different learning styles and multiple intelligences, and stop-motion animation is a great way to provide children with new learning experiences. At the beginning, she seems not willing to learn cost of money, and solve a math problem. While we told her we used stop motion to create a story, she became interested in our lesson. During the progress, she was active in taking pictures, adding music, and posting on YouTube. When she did her work, she knew to correct her mistakes. After she finished the story, she still excited about her Math story.
Learning statement
Integrating stop motion animation in Math can develop students’ technology skills and math learnings together.
Stop-motion animation can help children learn about, visualize, and explain a variety of math concepts. From addition and subtraction to algebra and graphing, having children use stop-motion animation to solve and explain math problems gives children additional math practice and supports differentiated instruction. For our stop motion animation, we combined story with place value. Student learned the value of money, use the value of money to solve math problems, and show the progress through stop motion animation. After math problems were changed into process or story, it became visualize and colorful story. While observing our student working, she solved the math problem firstly. Then, we will give her some properties, she took pictures by story’s sequence. She learned how to use ipad to take pictures, how to use imove to add music. When she was doing her work, she also can correct her answer and reinforce her math knowledge again. It is effective to integrating stop motion animation in math, which help students increase different skills.
Learning statement
Providing students enough materials can make stop motion animation more successful.
Being able to utilize some props (cards, cutout images) to create a short animated message, using an animation technique called stop-motion. Moving the objects and letters, frame by frame, we can create an illusion of movement. When I first time tried animation, and I was surprised to find out how easy the process could be. However, lack of materials became a problem for me. I need to use different materials to construct what I want to use in my stop motion animation. When our student began to create her own stop motion animation, we prepared lots of materials for her, such as lovely dog, model of human, money, cards, marks. When she saw the dog, she became interested in listening our instruction. She participated in creating the story about the dog. After solving the problem in the story, she kept the dog in her hand. Her attention was attracted by the lovely dog. When we showed her more materials, she looked excited in making the story, especially in putting materials and taking pictures. Therefore, providing students more materials to make stop motion animation can be easier to success.
