Blackpool Celebrating Science Conference 2015

Another busy day yesterday as team members at Everything Dinosaur took part in the Blackpool Celebrating Science Conference (BCSC2015).  Schools from all over the Blackpool area attended the event which was held at Unity Academy, with the conference taking place in the Academy’s spacious hall and the various science activities organised in nearby classrooms.  Everything Dinosaur was located in Mr Goldie’s classroom, we are grateful to Mr Goldie and his class for letting us use their room for the four dinosaur themed workshops we conducted with Year 4 and Year 5 pupils over the morning.

Blackpool Celebrating Science Conference

“Tyrannosaurus Sue” took charge of our conference stand and organised a fossil hunting activity for the children.  She had a very busy day with lots and lots of enthusiastic young palaeontologists exploring the fossil trays looking for ammonites, belemnites, brachiopods, petrified wood and coral.

Everything Dinosaur provides replicas of iconic animals from the geological record: Dinosaur Replica, Models of Fossils.

Preparing the Everything Dinosaur Stand at the Start of the Conference

Getting the stand and fossil hunting activity ready for the conference.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Lots of Fossils to Discover

We posted up some pictures of the fossils the children could find, they were really impressed with the shark teeth and loved looking at their fossil discoveries with the large magnifying glasses we provided.   We also included lots of information about Mary Anning, as one of the competitions on the day for the children was to collect as many names of famous scientists as they could.

In the meantime, in the classroom we had been looking at animals with backbones and exploring the vertebrae of dinosaurs.  In the second part of the workshop, Everything Dinosaur explained some of the aspects relating to new research into the Dinosauria.  Our well received workshop involved “Jurassic World” and breaking some bones, the activities and experiments delighted teachers and children alike.   We were very busy with the workshops and did not have a lot of time to organise feedback from the eight schools we were scheduled to work with.

Feedback from Teachers

However, we did get two teachers to provide some feedback on the workshops that we delivered.  It seems we got 5 out of 5 stars for our workshop.  This feedback is extremely helpful as the short lesson we provided was one that we had developed especially for the conference.

Feedback from Teachers after the Everything Dinosaur Workshop

5 stars for Everything Dinosaur. Top marks for Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

More Feedback from Everything Dinosaur’s Workshop

Everything Dinosaur gets rave reviews for workshop.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

All to soon it was time to pack up, after all, we have to prepare for some more dinosaur themed workshops in schools.   Our thanks to Unity Academy for being such gracious hosts and for Cheryl Langley and Jane Walpole for organising the Blackpool Celebrating Science Conference.  We really appreciate the “tweeted” pictures of us as well.

To learn more about Everything Dinosaur’s work: Email Everything Dinosaur.

Children Enjoy a Dinosaur Day at Broadoak Primary School

The teaching team at Broadoak  Primary School in Ashton-under-Lyne went that “extra mile” when it came to organising a memorable dinosaur day for the children at Key Stage 2.  They not only booked Everything Dinosaur to conduct a series of dinosaur and fossil themed workshops with Year 3 through to Year 6, but they converted the gazebo in the spacious school playground into a “crime scene” containing a dinosaur’s nest.

Dinosaur “Crime Scene”

It was great to see such an imaginative use of the facilities at the school and with a redevelopment and extension programme being planned for this larger than average primary school, we suspect that the new premises and facilities will be used to continue the inspiration teaching.

Staff at Broadoak Primary Convert the Gazebo into a Dinosaur Nest “Crime Scene”

Creative use of school resources.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Day

Our dinosaur expert did his best to field all the questions from the children.  The experiments we conducted and the information we imparted went down very well with the pupils, who were all eager to learn more about prehistoric animals as well as demonstrating what they already knew by telling Everything Dinosaur about their favourite “terrible lizards”.

The Dinosaur Nest in the School Gazebo

A dinosaur discovery at a school.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

To learn more about Everything Dinosaur’s product range: Visit Everything Dinosaur’s Website.

The dinosaur workshops that we conducted went down very well with the teaching team as well, here is an example of some of the feedback we received:

“5 out of 5 stars”

“Very child friendly, loved the fact that everything was put into context for the children.”

“Lots of child participation and positive reinforcement.”

“Worked fantastically well with the children and kept them all engaged and wanting to learn more, the children enjoyed exploring all the artefacts and fossils.”

“All the staff involved would highly recommend this workshop.”

To read additional testimonials about Everything Dinosaur: Everything Dinosaur – Testimonials.

The teaching team at Broadoak Primary supported by the office staff and the site supervisors really went out of their way to make the dinosaur day extra special for the children.  Well done to everybody involved.

Dinosaur Detectives at St Joseph’s RC Primary

Year 1 at St Joseph’s RC Primary had the opportunity to become “dinosaur detectives” on Wednesday afternoon as a team member from Everything Dinosaur joined their class to conduct a dinosaur workshop in their school.  The afternoon session was split into two parts.  Firstly, the children joined our dinosaur expert in the hall for a tactile exploration of fossils and all things dinosaur.  One of the key learning objectives as outlined by Miss Stanton (class teacher), was to encourage the children with their writing and vocabulary development.

The Size and Scale of Dinosaurs

The focus was on thinking of adjectives to help describe the different dinosaurs and to express just how big some of them were.  The lesson plan we had prepared dove-tailed nicely into the scheme of work the children had been undertaking in the morning.  There were some wonderful examples of great use of adjectives to describe Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex in the children’s work books.

Dinosaurs Help Children Develop Their Vocabulary

Children gain confidence using adjectives.

Picture credit: St Joseph’s RC Primary School/Everything Dinosaur

The children had lots of questions about dinosaurs, we were even asked about pterosaurs, so once we returned to the office we were able to send over some images of flying reptiles to help the teaching team explain what these animals looked like.  In addition, we were asked “which dinosaur is best?”  What a super question!  Rather than have our dinosaur expert answer it, we challenged the class to hold their own “dinosaur beauty contest” and vote for their favourite.

Dinosaur Detectives

We emailed over a set of six different dinosaur scale drawings and we put a special fact on each drawing about that specific prehistoric animal.  We then challenged Miss Stanton and her enthusiastic teaching assistant Mrs Sheikh, to get each child to pick their own personal favourite.  Could the children create a table to display the results?  What about making a line graph to show the voting preferences?

Microraptor – One of the Dinosaurs Chosen for the Classroom Vote

A great way to introduce things like tally counts and line graphs.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The second part of the dinosaur workshop was located in the classroom.  We showed the children several fossil teeth and then we got them to measure various dinosaur footprints and to compare the size of dinosaur’s feet to their own hands.  Lots of measuring cubes were used in this exercise and the children added and subtracted to work out how many one centimetre cubes bigger/smaller their own hands were when compared to the footprints.

A Dinosaur Themed Term Topic

This is the first time that the teaching team responsible for Year 1 have introduced a dinosaur themed term topic.  The children were really enthusiastic and keen to learn about prehistoric animals.  As a topic it is proving flexible enough to fit in with the demands of the new curriculum.

To learn more about Everything Dinosaur’s extensive product range: Email the team at Everything Dinosaur.

A Colourful Dinosaur Theme “Wow” Wall

A colourful dinosaur themed display.

Picture credit:  St Joseph’s RC Primary School/Everything Dinosaur

All to soon it was time to prepare for the end of the school day, but we did promise the children that when we got back to the Everything Dinosaur office we would email over additional teaching resources to help Miss Stanton, Mrs Sheikh and Year 1 to continue their “Dinosaur Detectives” topic.

To view the extensive range of educational, teaching resources available from Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Teaching Resources and Gifts.

“Walking with Dinosaurs” with Year 1

Class One and Class Two (Year 1), at Thorpe Hesley Primary School (South Yorkshire), have been studying dinosaurs over the summer term and Everything Dinosaur were invited in to help enthuse pupils and teachers alike with the term topic entitled “Walking with Dinosaurs”.

The children had lots of questions about prehistoric animals and over the course of the two workshops, our dinosaur expert did his best to answer them all.  We had some super questions from the children and even the teachers asked a few questions.  For example, Mrs Oakley, the teacher of Class Two asked what colour were dinosaurs?

“Walking with Dinosaurs”

As part of the scheme of work prepared for this topic, the dedicated teaching staff had laid out a number of dinosaur themed workstations for the children.  There was part of the well-organised classroom dedicated to dinosaur art and the children were encouraged to have a go at drawing dinosaurs.  There were some lovely examples of the children’s drawings on display.

A Well Thought Out Workstation Encouraging Children to Draw

Well thought out dinosaur themed workstation

Picture credit: Thorpe Hesley Primary/Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Models in School

The picture shows two Stegosaurus dinosaur models. To view the range dinosaur and prehistoric animal models in stock at Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Toys, Dinosaur Models.

The workstation was well lit, and roomy.  All the resources were handy to help the children with their illustrations.  Mr Docherty, told us about a little boy who loved Megalodon “O. megalodon“,  was an extinct type of shark, that may have measured more than fifteen metres long.  The children looked at some super-sized shark fossils as we explored how fossils feel and thought of suitable adjectives for them.

In addition, amongst the prehistoric animal extension resources Everything Dinosaur emailed over to the school after our visit, we made sure to include a Megalodon fact sheet and scale drawing.

Marine Reptile Drawings

We also included a set of marine reptile drawing materials, as well as pictures of ammonites so that the children could create their very own prehistoric seascape.

Dinosaurs Appeal to Kinaesthetic Learners

Lots of tactile handling of different materials.

Picture credit: Thorpe Hesley Primary/Everything Dinosaur

Extension Ideas and Activities

Our dinosaur expert explored herbivores and carnivores and we looked at dinosaur teeth.  Some of the children’s names are very similar to the names of prehistoric animals, this permitted us to send over some additional information on armoured dinosaurs such as Lexovisaurus and Scelidosaurus harrisonii.  Perhaps these additional extension resources sent over to Mrs Oakley and Miss Moran (Class One teacher), will inspire the budding young palaeontologists to have a go at designing their very own dinosaur.  If they do, we would want to see lots of labels on their model or drawing, an opportunity to utilise more adjectives.

As for the colours the children choose, the information we emailed over to Mrs Oakley in answer to her question about dinosaur colouration may help.  The children could also be encouraged to think about habitat and environment.  What colour might a plant-eating dinosaur living in a forest be?  What colour might a meat-eating dinosaur that lived in a desert be?  Can we introduce ideas like camouflage, perhaps looking at animals alive today to help inspire the classes?

For further information on Everything Dinosaur’s product range: Email Everything Dinosaur.

Sir Richard Owen

The pronunciation of prehistoric animals and all the terms that palaeontologists use can be a bit of a challenge.  Hopefully, the guide we gave Mrs Marshall (teaching assistant) will help.  Having met a young boy called Owen we explained that the word “dinosaur” was first coined by an Englishman (Richard Owen, later Sir Richard Owen).  We sent across some information all about this famous Victorian scientist, who recently had a blue plaque erected at his former school in Lancaster.

May be the children could create their very own blue plaque for Thorpe Hesley Primary, to celebrate studying “Walking with Dinosaurs”.

Blue Plaque Erected at the Former School of Sir Richard Owen

Sir Richard Owen honoured.

Picture credit: LRGS

The Year 1 teaching team which also includes Mr Meares, Mrs Burns along with school visitor Mrs Hawkins even provided the children with some bones of animals to explore.  Our dinosaur expert enjoyed looking at the various skulls of farm animals that had been brought in.  We even recognised the T. rex soft toy that had been placed next to the cranial material (skulls and jaws).  We are not sure what a real Tyrannosaurus rex would have made of it all.

Year 1 Children Can Explore the Bones of Animals

Wonderful use of different materials to show different properties.

Picture credit: Thorpe Hesley Primary School