Implementation of “Explorers of the past: dinosaurs” (SOI-MT-327)
Author: Marlene Attard, Learning Support Educator
School/Organization: Bishop Conservatory Primary School, Gozo, Malta
What had strike me most from choosing this learning scenario and not others is that it has incorporated different skills. It had a holistic approach through the STEAM aspect, and this will give the students the opportunity to enhance more their skills and knowledge. Cross curricular teaching and learning are of utmost importance for the students. Moreover, it will give the learners the opportunity to showcase their work since they had the chance to learn from each other. Besides this, this Learning Scenario really interest the students I support as they had mentioned on several occasions the topic. They will sure discover more this topic through the different activities chosen.
Introduction to Dinosaurs
This lesson will let the students to refine more their perception about dinosaurs and let them distinguish the difference between the real ones and their imaginary. The students are in kindergarten and are at the age of 4 to 5 years. Had implemented this lesson with a group of four students all from the same class. Before I had done the lesson with the students, they had already heard about Dinosaurs but have not known so much on them. They had seen dinosaurs in cartoons and on television. At home all of them had a toy related to dinosaurs and they play with them very often. Besides this in our Montessori class there is also a shelve that contains some different types of dinosaurs. Besides there are also a variety of flashcards the students can make use of while they are in the classroom. Although the students are very creative, they are limited to the digital heritage so this will give them the chance to widen their knowledge.
Overall, the lesson was a successful one and the students really enjoyed it. They had learned new things about the topic that they did not know. Seeing the students eagerly listening to what you have to say and engaging with the lesson was my pleasure. Had adapted and shorten the lesson plan as the learning scenario that I used was a three-week project. It took me around 45 mins to do this lesson that was adapted from the blog teachwitheuropeana.
Introduction (15 mins)
I had started the lesson with a power point that I had created. This helped the students to brainstorm the topic, gather information and enhance more their knowledge. The fact that I used a power point with pictures it gave them the chance to interact more with the topic. The use of technology in the lesson is essential for the students to understand more what they are learning. They were so curious and asked questions about the topic, were others imagined how a dinosaur can be.
Then I showed them a short video that showed a dinosaur back to life from a skeleton to reality with the use of the Virtual Reality. The fact that the video was taken in a museum in Berlin this made it more interesting for them to see as it was as in real life. They were so engaged and focused while scrolling around the hall of the museum. Below is the link of the short video and the PPT presentation that I had created attached to this document.
Bringing Giraffatitan DINOSAURS back to LIFE with 360 VR 🦕 | Google Arts & Culture – YouTube
After the video I presented them with some toy dinosaurs that we have in our classroom and let the distinguish the difference between them.
Independent working time (10 mins)
Then I used activity number 3 that was in the learning scenario. The students had to draw a dinosaur the way they had imagined it. They were so creative and imaginative as seen in the picture below.
Game (5 mins)
For this game I had used the same game that was used in the learning scenario. The students had to do two puzzles of dinosaurs that the pictures were based on Europeana.
Pressbild för KNEX-utställning. Dinosaur. | Europeana
Steam Challenge (10mins)
The students were then divided into two groups, and they were presented with two different dinosaur skeleton pictures taken from the Europeana site. The students were also given some cotton buds and they had to create a dinosaur skeleton using the cotton buds. This activity was taken from the learning scenario, but it was adapted. As seen in the picture below the students had the chance to think and create the skeleton. They came up with two different skeletons.
Closure (5min)
For the closure of the lesson, I had asked the students what they have learned about dinosaurs today. They had different answers and mentioned a variety of differences in dinosaurs.
What have they learned?
From this lesson the students had learned that there are different types of dinosaurs and that they have a variety of features. By the end of this lesson the students had expanded their knowledge and seen the difference of a real dinosaur and a skeleton one. It aspires to familiarize students with Europeana and aid them to develop inquiry skills. Moreover, students connected their learning with the real world and acquired a growth mindset. All in all, the implementation of the lesson has been beneficial for both the students and the teacher. Undoubtedly, the teacher integrated technology and Europeana resources meaningfully opening new doors for learning in all aspects. An advice I would give to other educators is that they can also include other subjects with this lesson such as Maths or English.
Feedback
When I did the self-evaluation of this lesson plan, I had noticed the importance of differentiation teaching as each student is unique and learn his own way. The fact that this lesson incorporated different types of learning such as creative arts, games, the use of a PPT and the use of a video containing the VR has made this lesson enriched with good material that was adequate for the students with different learning styles. From this experience I have learnt that there are so many other ways of making the lessons so engaging and interesting for the students. There is so many fruitful materials available for free on the site that I had not known about. This has helped me to gather more information and enriched my knowledge. I would surely recommend this platform to other educators as it has so many varieties of material that we as educators can use with our students. This platform will certainly make our planning more plain sailing. Apart from this, we can adapt and add more the cultural heritage in our lessons, and this makes it more fun for the students to learn about the different diversity of the heritage around the world. Besides this, the platform has the facility to search in it for the different sections you are specifically looking for and this will make it more easily to search for what to really want to.
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? Explorers of the past: dinosaurs (LS-EU-294) created by Vanessa Dubois
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Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Tekniska museet.