In science this week we will be looking at fossils and how they are made.
Talk to your parents about the process of fossilisation. Explain the different
stages.
You have a group of to learn. These spellings will be using the sounds you have been
working with in class. Please talk to somebody at home to find out what these words
mean if you do not know– maybe you can look in a dictionary together.
Please write each word in a sentence which makes sense, and practice spelling the word
with an adult at home.
Phase 3 spelling list:
Phase 4 spelling list:
List
Champ
Mist
Chest
Best
Chimp
Nest
Chuck
Test
Vest
West
Cost
Lost
Dust
Just
Must
rust
Chunk
Thank
Thump
Throw
Think
Phase 4/5 spelling
Phase 5 spelling
list:
list:
Oy, ir, ue, aw
Enjoy
Prefixes –mis, -dis
Royal
Incorrect
Incomplete
Annoy
Thirteen
Coin
Write
Hurry
Poison
Ice
Blue
Palm
Due
Rather
Drawer
Disbelief
Phase 6 spelling
misspell
list:
Wanted
Liked
Looked
Roasted
Pulled
smiled
Fossilised
Paleontologist
During impact day, we made our own 3D dinosaurs with Mod Rock. We would
like you to design your own dinosaurs, giving them their own unique name and
colourings.
It is a competition and the best 3 dinosaurs in the year will be selected by
the Year 3 teachers, for you as a class to decorate. They will then be displayed in the pod!
Good luck!
The fossil girl
Welcome to my fossil shop! My name is Mary Anning. I’ve lived here in Lyme Regis all
my life. I was born in 1799 above this very shop, where my father was a carpenter.
On Sundays my father would take me for a walk along the beaches to look for fossils.
He sold them to ladies and gentlemen who come to the seaside every Summer.
Father taught me how to tap a rock just in the right place with a hammer, to make it
split open. Often there would be nothing inside it. But sometimes we would find the
skeleton of a beautiful fish, or a curly shell. The best time to find a fossil is after a
storm, when the wind and waves batter and chip away at the cliffs. When a storm hits
Lyme Regis, all sorts of strange creatures just fall out of the cliffs. Father said that
we were “fishing for curiosities”. It was a bit like fishing because we never knew what
we would catch. But out “fish’ were made of stone.
My poor father died in 1810, when I was just ten years old. I had to work hard to help
feed my family. I decided that I would spend all my time looking for curiosities to sell.
One day, I was looking for a fossil with my brother, Joseph. Walking along the beach,
I looked at a cliff and saw something wonderful staring back at me. It was the skull of
a strange animal. And what a skull! It must have been about one meter long, with a big
round eye hole and jaws stuffed full of teeth.
“it’s a sea dragon, Mary!” said Joseph excitedly. We hammered at the rocks until we
could free the skull. Although it was very heavy, we managed to carry it home.
I was sure that the rest of the creature must be there, buried in the cliff. All I had
to do was wait for another rockslide. So after every storm, I would go back to the
spot where we found the skull, hoping to see the rest of the skeleton.
It was over a year later that the rocks finally fell away. There was my creature! Instead of legs, the animal had short paddles. I chipped at the skeleton carefully and
we carried it back to the shop. News spread quickly about our ‘sea dragon’, everybody wanted to come and see it. We were able to charge visitors some money to
have a look. Then we sold the skeleton to a nobleman for £23 – more money then I’d
ever seen before. At the same time I met my first geologists – scientific gentlemen
who came to see the creature and argue about what it was. One of these geologists,
Mr. Konig, gave my creature a name – Ichthyosaurus.
Check your work:

Write in full sentences with capital letters
and full stops.

A full sentence includes some information
from the question.

You can not start sentences with ‘and’ or
‘because’.
Must
1.
What was Mary’s Dad’s job? What did he make?
2.
How did Mary learn how to find fossils?
3.
What did she sometimes find in the rocks?
4.
What age was Mary when she found the skull?
5.
What did the geologist call the dinosaur?
Should
1.
Use your dictionary to look up the word curiosity. What does it mean?
2.
What age was Mary by the time she found the whole skeleton?
3.
What did Mary go back to the same place every time there was a storm?
4.
Did Mary know at first that she had found a dinosaur?
Could
1.
Why is “fishing for curiosities” written in inverted commas?
2.
Why did Joseph think the creature was a dragon?
3.
Write a short paragraph about a time when you found something very valuable or special.