Dinosaur-themed activities inspire young children to learn about science

A child’s fascination with dinosaurs and all things prehistoric helps motivate and inspire students in many schools. With the advent of a more creative curriculum, teachers and teaching assistants are using children’s love of dinosaurs to help get them excited about science subjects and exploring concepts such as developing and testing theories.

Described as using a “Triceratops as a Trojan Horse,” students are able to explore scientific concepts and methodologies using a variety of activities that allow for differentiation in the classroom setting and provide prepared opportunities for supported learning and extension activities. With a new species of dinosaur being named every twenty to thirty days and something like 1,200 genera of dinosaurs already described, these prehistoric animals always seem to have a high profile in the media. This can help teachers write inspiring lesson plans based on these long extinct reptiles.

teach by example

An example would be working with children studying key stage two of the national curriculum (children aged 7-9, typically in years 3-5 of primary school). The concept of “deep time” can be explained using a time line they build showing when dinosaurs lived in relation to people the children may have already studied as part of the previous quarter’s topics: the Romans, the ancient Greeks, etc By drawing a line to scale showing how many millions of years dinosaurs have existed, students, under the supervision of faculty, can construct a line diagram showing when dinosaurs lived and linking this time to the time of Ancient Rome, Greek civilization and such With a one centimeter time scale representing a million years, children can place events in the correct time periods, a goal set within the teaching objectives of the national curriculum. By placing individual dinosaurs in the correct geologic period, Apatosaurus within the Jurassic and tyrannosaurus rex Within the Cretaceous, students can appreciate which dinosaurs lived when and which other prehistoric animals lived at the same time. Secondary resources can then be used for children to learn more about individual dinosaurs and this leads to extension activities such as each child researching, drawing and writing about their own prehistoric animal.

Using timelines to explore deep geologic time

When making my own timeline with school-age children, my advice would be to use a scale of one centimeter equals one million years and trace the history of life on Earth from the present to 250 million years ago, the beginning. of the Triassic geological period. and just before dinosaurs rose to prominence in terms of land animal populations on Earth. This means that a timeline of about 2.5 meters long can be created, which can easily be placed along part of the classroom wall for display purposes.

Working with very young children at school

With children under the age of three beginning to learn and display knowledge about these long-extinct reptiles, the Dinosauria lend themselves to working with children of reception/foundation age. When consulting on Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) teaching, it is important to help children understand the nature of materials and the world around them. The EYFS framework has recently been revised and remains the legal framework for required teaching standards for early years providers. This teaching framework helps prepare children of reception/foundation age for school and ensures that children acquire the necessary skills to help them progress through their academic studies in the future. Several teachers are making “Dinosaurs” the theme for the first quarter kids find, fossils and models can help them explore the properties of different materials and even different dinosaur toys can help them learn about different parts of the body. Simple selection and counting games such as choosing all the models of prehistoric animals that have four legs, counting the number of green ones and the like can be encouraged. These types of activities also lend themselves to a number of extension activities, such as grouping together animals that share the same and similar characteristics.

Key Stage Three alumni

When working with older children, a simple math lesson can be made more challenging and fun by creating a dinosaur path out of make-believe dinosaur footprints. Children can learn to measure and calculate with these simple but imaginative accessories. In one school, a principal was asked to step in and lead a one-hour math class with a group of 7-year-olds (Key Stage 3 ages 11-12). Borrowing some footprint drawings, she placed a series of dinosaur footprints in the school hallway and then, dividing the class into groups, challenged them to use rulers and tape measures to get as much information as possible about the animal they were looking for. left traces. He was able to develop this lesson plan by introducing the concept of scale drawings and average measurements (the arithmetic mean). It was certainly a memorable and rewarding math-based lesson that helped familiarize students with simple science concepts like mapping and graphing, as well as introducing simple equations and using arithmetic.

The Dinosauria is a very useful term topic or partial term topic for elementary and middle school students. This theme has proven especially helpful in encouraging reading-averse children to become more enthusiastic about reading and using books as reference material for further study.

Helping Teaching and Teaching Assistants

Teachers and teaching assistants can use children’s interest in prehistoric animals to help them learn about the world around them and simple scientific principles. Find out who the dinosaurs were, where they lived, what they ate, when they lived, how big they were, etc. All can help teachers to ensure that national curriculum objectives are met. Importantly, it also means that imaginative and inspiring lesson plans are being designed, plans that will allow for a lot of differentiation and extension, as well as accommodate different learners’ needs and learning styles.

It seems that Triceratops is becoming a “Trojan Horse” to help young children learn about scientific subjects through creative and imaginative teaching schemes.