TEACHOSAURUS AND
LEARNOCERATOPS:
dinosaurs as
a motivating
crosscurricular
theme
Denis Duggan takes a look into the benefits
that dinosaurs may bring to the classroom
A
s a youngster, I was
hooked on dinosaurs; I
was captivated by them.
Anything I read about dinosaurs
instantly transported me back to
prehistoric times. My imagination
would go into overdrive. But
dinosaurs were more than just
entertainment for me: through
them I learned a lot of science.
Could I use them to improve other
children’s understanding and
knowledge of science concepts?
As a primary PGCE student,
when my university tutor
recommended that I select
learning contexts that interest
and motivate children and thus
promote their desire to learn,
I jumped at the chance to use
dinosaurs. Many children’s authors
have capitalised on their popularity
with children by structuring
fictional stories around dinosaur
characters, as, for instance, in the
Puffin ‘Harry and the dinosaurs’
series by Ian Whybrow.
Dinosaur books
To investigate what a child might
learn from dinosaurs, I started by
comparing the many non-fiction
dinosaur books out there on
the bookshop shelves using the
following criteria:
Illustrations. Ideally, they
should be eye-catching. By
conversing with children
I have found that they are
most interesting in images of
dinosaurs interacting with each
other or with their environment.
Captions are also important.
Presentation. Is the
information presented in a
clear, easy-to-follow manner? Is
it consistently presented? Is it
scientifically accurate? Features
such as brief information given
in ‘fact files’ may also add to the
clarity of the page layout.
Engagement. Do you find it
engaging and easily accessible
yourself? Consider for example:
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TEACHOSAURUS AND LEARNOCERATOPS
Children are
keen to share
facts gleaned
from books.
‘Brachiosaurus was as long as a
tennis court, as high as a threestorey house and weighed as much
as ten large elephants’ compared
with ‘Brachiosaurus grew up to 23
metres long and 12 metres high and
weighed 30–50 tonnes’. I think the
former description would appeal
more to a child, although the
actual measurements should be
included somewhere.
Activities. Are there any
additional features such as 3D
galleries, quizzes and other such
engaging activities?
These books may appear to use
very advanced vocabulary, but it
is important not to underestimate
children’s ability to decipher the
information through studying
the pictures, reading the simpler
parts of the text and through
word recognition. However, some
important concepts may be too
difficult for children to grasp on
their own and adult involvement
in scaffolding the learning may be
needed to ensure understanding.
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Children’s knowledge
During a school placement,
I discussed with some of
the children what they
knew about dinosaurs and
some of the things they
came up with surprised
me. There were 5- and
6-year-olds who were familiar
with the word ‘prey’ and were
able to use it in the correct
context when describing what
was happening in a picture in a
dinosaur book. They were able
to identify which dinosaurs were
plant-eaters and which were
meat-eaters according to their
physical traits. Some were able
to recognise the specific uses of
physical features: ‘Stegosaurus
has plates to protect his back from
the Tyrannosaurus rex and his
spiky tail helps him to fight back’,
‘Diplodocus has a long neck so
he can eat leaves on trees’, ‘T. rex
has claws on his feet, he stamps
with his feet’. And of course they
knew the various names of the
dinosaurs. They did, however,
have a tendency to refer to planteaters as ‘good’ and meat-eaters
as ‘bad’, which may well come
from cartoons seen on television
or from animated films such as
The land before time.
I later questioned three 7- and
8-year-old children, who all
claimed to have an interest in
Jan/Feb 2011
dinosaurs. My questions were
based on: when dinosaurs lived,
what dinosaurs were, fossils, and
the physical traits of dinosaurs
including size. When asked about
when dinosaurs lived, answers
varied from ‘thousands of years
ago’ to the correct answer of 65
million years ago. One child
knew that dinosaurs were reptiles
and clarified this by saying that
they were scaly and laid eggs.
They made a good effort of
defining a fossil (it is a stone but
in the shape of a bone) and one
child was able to tell me that a
palaeontologist is the person who
finds the fossils. There was some
discussion about whether you
could find fossils in your garden
or whether they are only found
in rock. When questioned about
the size of dinosaurs, answers
ranged from ‘6 foot 10’ to ‘maybe
T. rex was as big as the school’.
Responses from the children on
defence mechanisms included
‘camouflage’, ‘maybe he would wrap
his long neck around the attacker’,
‘running away’, ‘some are so big that
they wouldn’t feel the meat-eater
attack them’, and ‘they could attack
back in numbers’.
These conversations indicate
how much children know
already but also highlight
some misconceptions and
misunderstandings. In
particular, the children had
poor understanding of large
measurements and scale and
limited knowledge of long time frames.
Teaching Ideas
These conversations with
the children informed some
approaches for using dinosaurs
as a cross-curricular teaching
context. Here are some of those
ideas.
For science, we could look
at characteristics of living
things, such as what they ate
and how they reproduced, and
at classification. The children
could organise pictures of
various dinosaurs on cards into
groups according to physical
similarities. Such cards or stickers
are commonly provided with
dinosaur books. Children’s
knowledge and understanding of
dinosaurs can be transferred over
to today’s wildlife as a follow-on
TEACHOSAURUS AND LEARNOCERATOPS
theme. There are many areas
where parallels can be drawn,
such as classification, food-webs
and animal interdependence,
looking at physical characteristics
and investigating why animals
have these characteristics (e.g.
stripy coat, big ears, eyes on side
of head), and thinking about
why dinosaurs became extinct
and why species today become
extinct.
For literacy, we can explore
the terminology and language of
science, including the ‘big’ words
such as carnivore, extinction and
evolution.
For mathematics, we can
study geographical timeframes,
by constructing a timeline on
the classroom wall to provide a
visual representation of when
the dinosaurs lived
relative to other
major events such
as the appearance
of man. Questions
such as ‘How long
did they rule the
world?’ or ‘Compare
this length of time
with how long
man has existed’
can be looked
at with the aid
of the timeline.
We can look at
measurement in terms
of
dinosaur length and height,
as well as scale. One way of
doing this could be to give the
children a picture showing the
size of T. rex in comparison to the
size of a man. In small groups,
they estimate and record the
length of T. rex using whatever
method they wish outside in the
school yard, with the picture,
some chalk and the teacher as
representative of the size of a
man. When they have finished
estimating, they are provided
with the actual dimensions (T. rex
was around 14 metres long). They
can then measure out 14 metres
and see how close their estimate
was.
A historical approach could
include stories of fossil-hunters,
such as Roy Chapman Andrews
(see Websites), who risked their
lives in harsh environments to
make amazing discoveries, while
geography might include locating
where in the world a particular
fossil was found, or studying the
diversity of environments that
were present 65 million years
ago and how they compare with
today’s.
Dinosaur footprints make a
good subject for enquiry. What
can fossilised footprints tell us
about the dinosaur that made
them? Draw footprints on a sheet
of paper, or perhaps outside in
the playground with chalk on a
larger scale linked to the above
scale activity. The footprints
become clues that can help ‘dino
detectives’ uncover a scenario
and what types of dinosaur
were involved, similar to the
‘Tricky tracks’ activity from the
RSC (see Websites). Children
could think about things such
as: Was he walking on four
What can fossilised
footprints tell us about
the dinosaur that made
them?
legs or two legs? What type of
dinosaur was he? (Sharp claws
would indicate a carnivore.) Are
there other footprints nearby and
whose are they? Was the dinosaur
walking or running? This can be
determined by how far apart the
footprints are and the number of
steps in the space (you can model
this in mud or sand outside!).
Final thoughts
What I especially like about using
dinosaurs as a cross-curricular
theme is that science is the
lead subject for this theme. It is
refreshing to think of science as
the focal point for such a wideranging topic. Whether or not you
can see yourself teaching through
the topic of dinosaurs, I do feel
it is important to place subject
matter in a context that stimulates
children and encourages them to
learn. Dinosaurs are often going
to be used in my classroom as a
means to stimulate the interest
of the children in what I am
teaching. I know that I will enjoy
talking about dinosaurs and
put energy and enthusiasm into
teaching about them!
If you are still unconvinced of
the benefits of Teachosaurus and
Learnoceratops, may I suggest at
least introducing some dinosaur
books into your classroom and
watching the children explore
the unfamiliar concepts that
dinosaurs will introduce. You
may be as surprised as I was at
how much interest they have and
how quickly they pick up the
knowledge.
At the time of writing Denis
Duggan is a primary PGCE
student at the University of
Exeter.
Email: [email protected]
What do
these tracks
tell us? (from
the RSC ‘Tricky
tracks’ activity)
Websites
Roy Chapman Andrews:
www.strangescience.net/andrews.htm
RSC ‘Tricky tracks’ activity:
media.rsc.org/Nature%20of%20science/NSci-Bbox1.pdf
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