Patterns in Seasons and Shadows Activities for 4th Grade Science

The Kesler Science 4th Grade Patterns of Change – Shadows and Seasons Complete 5E Lesson makes teaching a breeze with ready-to-use, engaging materials. Designed for student-led learning, this multi-day lesson minimizes prep while maximizing student success.

Students explore how shadows and seasons change over time through multimodal activities, including a differentiated station lab with hands-on experiments, reading passages, research tasks, and videos. Output stations let students showcase learning through writing, illustrating, and assessments, with a challenge station for enrichment.

Editable PowerPoints, interactive notebooks, and student-choice projects enhance engagement, while printable and digital formats ensure flexibility. Spanish translations support diverse learners, making this a comprehensive, adaptable resource for any classroom.

The Kesler Science Patterns of Change – Shadows and Seasons Station Lab engages 4th graders in student-led, hands-on learning. Students analyze data to recognize patterns in shadows, seasons, and the Moon’s appearance. This modular lab saves prep time while promoting independent exploration.

With nine differentiated stations, students interact with multimodal input activities like experiments, research, reading, and videos. Output stations let them demonstrate knowledge through sorting, drawing, writing, and assessments. A bonus challenge station extends learning for early finishers.

Designed for flexibility, the lab works in print or digital formats, making it adaptable for in-class or virtual learning. Teacher-friendly resources ensure seamless implementation with minimal setup.

The Kesler Science Patterns of Change - Shadows and Seasons Student Choice Projects empower 4th graders to showcase their understanding through creative, student-led projects. With nine project options plus a “design your own” choice, students can select an output style that fits their strengths. A flexible grading rubric allows for teacher, peer, or self-assessment.

These projects support differentiation, offering a modified version with targeted options for remediation. Teachers can challenge students by assigning multiple projects while maintaining consistent assessment criteria. Multimodal learning ensures engagement and personalized exploration.

Designed for easy implementation, these projects use common classroom supplies and include printable and digital formats. Whether working with paper and markers or digital tools, students can fully engage in hands-on, meaningful learning.

The Kesler Science Patterns of Change: Seasons and Shadows Integrated Writing Activity immerses 4th graders in science and ELA by guiding them to express their understanding of shadows through engaging journal entries. Designed for both in-person and virtual learning, this resource fosters science reasoning while enhancing writing skills.

Aligned to TEKS and NGSS, the student-centered activities are low prep yet high quality, making them ideal for elaboration, review, or integration with other Kesler Science resources. The resource includes printable and digital formats, full and half-sheet handouts, rubrics, and a projection version to maximize flexibility.

This writing activity serves as a cross-curricular extension, pre-test, student choice project, or differentiation tool, ensuring all learners can showcase their knowledge in a meaningful way.

The Kesler Science Earth/Space WIKI Tickets provide fun, easy formative assessments for 3rd–5th grade science. This set includes 33 engaging exit tickets aligned to NGSS and TEKS, covering topics like the water cycle, Earth's rotation, weather patterns, and natural resources.

Each topic features five formats: a full-screen display for projection, three printable handout sizes, and an interactive digital version compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides. A bonus table of contents file ensures easy standard alignment.

WIKI Tickets (“What I Know Is”) serve as exit tickets, bellringers, or quick checks for understanding, making them a flexible tool for both in-person and virtual learning environments.

Year-Round Resources

These year-round activities will increase your students' understanding of many middle school science topics. All of these activities are also included in the Kesler Science Membership.

Visual Data & Graphing

You're not alone if your students struggle with understanding graphs, charts, and tables. It's a skill that takes an enormous amount of practice. This resource will help students build a strong foundation in analyzing data and creating their own data visualizations.

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Bell Ringers and Warm-Ups

These middle school science bell ringers are an excellent way to engage your students as soon as they walk into your classroom. This comprehensive FULL YEAR resource includes everything you need to start off each science class with an interesting warm-up activity.

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Review Board Games

Each game board has been carefully designed to keep students engaged. There are 10 different action spaces on each board and dozens of question cards. All of the actions are related to science concepts and keep the students motivated throughout the game.

Each game is ready to play. Simply print out the board and the cards and let the students enjoy reviewing nine different units.

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Essential Questions

Below are the essential questions associated with the lessons and activities included in this unit. This topic is only one of more than 100 middle school science topics included in the Kesler Science Membership.

Essential Questions

How can we predict patterns of change in shadows?
How can we predict patterns of change in seasons?