Year 1’s Interpretation of a Mass Extinction

Yesterday, one of the team members at Everything Dinosaur was at a school, working with teachers and teaching assistants to deliver a dinosaur workshop and to conduct some outreach activities centred around the topic for the term – dinosaurs.  The eager young palaeontologists wanted to show us their dancing with dinosaurs drama routine.

Dancing with Dinosaurs

The students were all very keen and had lots and lots of questions, which were answered with our usual enthusiastic gusto.  At the end of a busy day, the children from Year 1 (aged 5-6) put on a dancing display as they interpreted how they thought the dinosaurs met their demise.  We moved to the hall, and in time to the music, the children at first pretended to be different types of dinosaurs, four-legged herbivores, giant long-necks and ferocious predators.

As the music grew louder (indicating the imminent arrival of an extraterrestrial body such as an asteroid), the “dinosaurs” became scarred and started running around in a panic.  At the crescendo of the music, the asteroid hit the Earth and all the children fell down and stayed very still, indicating the demise of the Dinosauria.

It was a very creative piece of music and movement, helping the young students to burn off some energy after they had been sitting down making dinosaur eggs, and digging for dinosaurs in the sand pit.

The teaching staff had considered how to appeal to different learning styles and to use differentiation in their teaching delivery.  The topic had been very well planned with lots of engagement for all the young students and it was a pleasure to have been a part of it.

I’m sure the children will really enjoy the rest of this term’s topic, after all, teaching about dinosaurs in school is fun.

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