Investigating Dinosaurs

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Our second and third graders were doing a paleontology dig to enhance our exploration of dinosaurs.  Our entire dinosaur unit centered around investigation, writing and documenting, and seeing the world through a paleontologist's eyes.

 In mid spring the Phoenix Bird class (2nd and 3rd grade) began their unit on dinosaurs by becoming paleontologists.

We teachers buried various fossils, artifacts, and "dinosaur" bones from different geologic time periods in the school's sandbox.

Each dig group worked with paleontologist tools and with each other to uncover different specimens.

They logged each fossil, artifact or dinosaur bone with sketches, measurements and detailed descriptions.

The results were that this was a great engager for our new unit. When we completed the dig, the kids were so excited about exploring the world of dinosaurs in more depth and understood how to uncover fossils, how to measure them, and how to scientifically describe them.

This coincided with our science curriculum, but also, we incorporated math because we performed measurements, addition, and subtraction.  We also used our language arts skills by reading about dinosaurs and then writing about our results and thoughts in our science journals.