Year 1 and Year 2 Show Off their Writing Skills

Last month, a team member at Everything Dinosaur visited Hoylandswaine Primary School to help teach about dinosaurs and fossils as the Year 1 and Year 2 students had spent a good portion of their term learning all about prehistoric animals.

Under the guidance of Miss Birkinshaw, the teacher and with the support of Mrs Burr (teaching assistant), the school children had been studying how fossils are formed, the life of Mary Anning, dinosaurs and the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous.  The enthusiastic, young palaeontologists had even had a go at making their own fossils and creating their own dinosaur dig site in the classroom.  Our dinosaur expert felt very much at home surrounded by all the artwork and posters showing dinosaur facts and figures that the children had made.

Everything Dinosaur

At the end of the morning’s teaching, the Everything Dinosaur team member challenged the children to write a thank you letter.  Could they start their letter correctly?  Could they include a dinosaur fact or perhaps tell us about their favourite part of the morning’s dinosaur themed activities?  Would they use connectives, proper sentences, could they think of a way of ending their letter?

Having returned from some fieldwork, there was a bulging postal sack waiting in the office and amongst all our correspondence was a set of thank you letters from Hoylandswaine Primary.

Thank you Letter Received from Jacob

Jacob loved learning all about Spinosaurus.

Picture credit: Hoylandswaine Primary Year 1/2 – Jacob

One of the many thank you letters received by Everything Dinosaur, young Jacob has illustrated his letter with some three-toed dinosaur footprints.

Gracie’s Thank You Letter to Everything Dinosaur

Gracie’s favourite thing was learning all about giant sharks.

Picture credit: Hoylandswaine Primary Year 1/2 – Gracie

Thank You Letters

Gracie chose to illustrate her letter with pictures of dinosaurs and a marine reptile swimming in the sea.  We had lots of colourful letters and we have posted them all up onto our huge warehouse wall so that we can look at them and smile whilst we are sorting out fossils and working on our dinosaurs.

Thank you Letter Sent in by Katie

“Amazing fossils”.

Picture credit: Hoylandswaine Primary Year 1/2 – Katie

A very big thank you to all the children who sent us thank you letters, there are too many to post up here but we have put them all up onto our warehouse wall.  Miss Birkinshaw even got in on the act and sent us a short note to thank Everything Dinosaur for their morning’s teaching work at the school.

Teacher’s Thank You Note

“The children really did have a fantastic morning.”

Picture credit: Hoylandswaine Primary Year 1/2 – Miss Birkinshaw

A Creative Writing Exercise

Setting a creative writing exercise such as this, is very worthwhile.  Often it can be difficult for the teaching team to motivate the children to write, but this follow up exercise enables the teacher to assess a child’s writing and reading progress as well as testing recall and how the pupil conveys information.  At Everything Dinosaur we always follow up letters we receive and we send out a reply to the school so that the children can learn a little more about the work we do and what we have been doing since our school visit.

Once again, our thanks to all the children in Year 1 and Year 2 who sent in thank you letters.

To view the range of dinosaur toys, models and games available from Everything Dinosaur: Everything Dinosaur.