Teaching Year 4 About Mary Anning

By | July 6th, 2015|Educational Activities, Famous Figures, Main Page, Teaching|0 Comments

Year 4 Learn All About Mary Anning

When Everything Dinosaur team members attended the Blackpool Celebrating Science Conference last week, they helped organise a competition for the young scientists from the schools that attended.  As well as running a fossil hunting activity and conducting four dinosaur workshops over the course of the conference, team members also provided the school children attending with information on Mary Anning.  By name dropping scientists, the children could make up a list of famous contributors to scientific endeavour.  A prize was awarded to the school which created the longest list.

Mary Anning

Naturally, with a fossil hunting activity as part of our dinosaur workshop, Mary Anning was an easy choice for ourselves.

Posting Up Information on Mary Anning

Helping Year 4 to learn all about scientists.

Helping Year 4 to learn all about scientists.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture above is of the poster we put up on our fossil hunting workshop stand.  We put it in a prominent place so that all the children could easily spot it as they hunted for fossils on our artificial beach.  During the dinosaur workshop, which we especially created for this event, we made sure to mention the competition and Mary Anning so that the children could be encouraged to take part.

To view replicas of ammonites and belemnites, fossils of which Mary Anning collected: Replica Ammonites and Belemnites.

Dinosaur Workshop

The dinosaur workshop that we had prepared for this conference involved looking at real dinosaur fossil bones, exploring how our bodies compare to those of dinosaurs and looking at some of the very latest research.  Teachers were also invited to break a few bones, nothing to worry about though, just a clever experiment that we thought up that helped the children learn what our bones (amphibian bones, reptile, bird and mammal bones) are composed of.  Collagen was indeed the word of the day and helped to link our dinosaur workshop together as well as tying it into important aspects of the Key Stage 2 science curriculum.

To contact Everything Dinosaur about Mary Anning: Contact Mary Anning.