Nightingale

From Raindrops to Rivers: What is a droplet's journey?

This term year 4 have been learning all about the water cycle and the formation of rivers. They focused on the Amazon River and the River Thames and compared and contrasted their features. In their art and PBL lessons, the children created backdrops to show the different stages of a water droplet's journey from evaporation, along a river's course to its return to the ocean. They then used stop frame animation to show the movement of the droplet around the water cycle and narrated the process over the top using a script that was written in a documentary style during their English lessons.

The Journey of a Water Droplet

Below is our stop frame animation showing the journey of a water droplet around a water cycle.

720p.mov

Learning about the water cycle and river formation

We created a mini water cycle in a bag to observe the processes of evaporation, condensation and precipitation.

We learnt about the features of a river along its different courses.

We then spent a few lessons comparing the human and physical features of the River Thames and the Amazon River.

Features of the River Thames

Features of the Amazon River

The Water Cycle

Writing our documentary scripts

To write our documentary style scripts we watched some David Attenborough nature documentaries and created a word bank of the words and phrases he uses that might be helpful for our script. We then mapped out the different stages of our script before writing it in detail. We made sure our script included directions for what would be moving in the stop motion, as well as the words the narrators would need to say over the top.

Creating our backdrops

We started off by storyboarding our section of the water cycle, drawing detailed pictures for each stage and then thinking carefully about what materials we would need to create them. With our partner we then made a prototype out of paper first and then started to create our larger, final backdrop out of sugar paper, tissue paper and card.

Creating the stop motion video

The final stage of the process was to create our stop motion video on the iPad. We set up a recording studio on one of the tables in our classroom and worked with our partner to move the different parts and take the images. It took a while (each section required at least 80 photos) but we worked collaboratively and creatively and managed to get all of the sections completed in two days!

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