Dinosaur Facts Compiled by Year 1 Children

Children in Year 1 compiled lots of facts about dinosaurs and prehistoric animals as part of a term topic on life in the past.  The enthusiastic teaching team had challenged the pupils to conduct some independent research into dinosaurs and other creatures that lived before people.

The children were given a choice, they could research a single animal such as Brontosaurus, Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus rex, or they could create a poster about dinosaurs in general.  The only prerequisite stated by the teachers was that the children’s work had to include lots of information, lots of facts.

Children in Year 1 Compile Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Posters

Picture credit: Newport Infant School (Squirrel Class)/Everything Dinosaur

Demonstrating Knowledge About Dinosaurs

During our visit to the school to conduct a series of dinosaur workshops with the Year 1 classes, the children were keen to demonstrate their knowledge confidently asserting that dinosaurs laid eggs and that dinosaur fossils could be found all over the world, even in Australia!  We provided a number of extension resources to help support the school’s scheme of work, including a challenge to the children to create a non-chronological report on the life and times of the famous scientist Sir Richard Owen, highly appropriate since one of the children was called Owen.

Producing Dinosaur Posters for Display at the School

Picture credit: Newport Infant School (Squirrel Class)/Everything Dinosaur

For further information about Everything Dinosaur’s work in schools and to enquire about our outreach work: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

Dinosaurs as a Teaching Topic

Learning about dinosaurs provides plenty of opportunities for cross-curricular activities.  For example, the children had been exploring the properties of different materials by making prehistoric animal models and this topic has lots of scope to include writing activities (fiction and non-fiction writing).  Everything Dinosaur’s workshop leader challenged the classes (and their teachers), to produce a dinosaur themed poem.  A piece of prose that features a prehistoric animal, an intriguing idea that helps the children explore different types of writing and gives them the opportunity to develop their vocabulary, introducing the idea of stanzas, cadence, verses and iambic pentameter.

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented:

“Our workshops provided the ideal provocation to kick-start the children’s term topic.  Dinosaurs and prehistoric animals certainly enthused the pupils and they were eager to demonstrate their pre-knowledge and to show their visitor all the posters, fact sheets and non-chronological reports on life in the past that they had created.  The teachers too, were very enthusiastic and eager to learn, taking lots of notes and photographs during the sessions with the three classes.”

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.