It's About Time
Mass Extinction and Fossil Records
The focus of a fossil-based lesson uses graphs and charts that allow young paleontologists to make inferences about events of mass extinction. They must apply their previous knowledge about fossil records in this final lesson of the...
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Day the Mesozoic Died
While this is not the traditional, step-by-step lesson plan, it is chock-full of material that you can easily incorporate into your earth history unit. Its main purpose is to serve as a guide to using a three-part film, The Day the...
Curated OER
Climatic Changes
In this weather instructional activity, learners read an excerpt describing the climate and extinction. Then they explain what the climate was like during the Age of Dinosaurs. Students also determine some factors that affected the...
Curated OER
Dinosaurs 1: Where Are the Dinosaurs?
Students explore dinosaurs and their extinction. In this dinosaur lesson, students view dinosaur websites and videos to gain an understanding of the world long ago. Discussion questions follow. Students create a paper mache dinosaur egg.
Curated OER
The Geologic TimeString
Learners create a simple tool to visualize geologic time. They create knots to represent the K/T, P/T and Precambrian boundaries in a 4.6 meter string with each millimeter representing one million years. They then refer back to this...
Curated OER
What Killed the Dinosaurs?
Young scholars demonstrate how scientists use evidence to formulate hypotheses. They write an essay describing the Cretaceous and Paleocene time periods from the point of view of someone living in that time. In addition, they formulate...
American Museum of Natural History
Fighting Dinos
A famous fossil of fighting dinosaurs holds as many questions as answers. Scholars first analyze the fossil itself by virtually highlighting the specific bones of the dinosaurs and read about their function and importance. They then test...
Curated OER
Mesozoic Murals
Middle schoolers create a mural of one of the Mesozoic Periods. For this geologic timeline lesson, students will research the plants and animals that lived in the Mesozoic Era in order to create a mural to scale that represents one of...
Curated OER
Relative Dating-Telling Time Using Fossils
Students explore how to read fossil range charts. They develop an knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the fossil record. Students become familiar with the concepts index fossil and fossil range. Students use bar graphs to...
Curated OER
Toilet Paper Geologic Time Scale
Students examine and demonstrate the extent of geologic time compared to recent time. They develop a demonstration of geologic time using an unrolled roll of toilet paper, with each sheet of toilet paper representing 20 million years.
Curated OER
Dinosaurs Before Dark
In this paleontology matching instructional activity, students match clues related to dinosaurs to scrambled words. Twelve words and clues are given.
Curated OER
Dig This
Fifth graders explore the work of paleontologists and the life of dinosaurs and create a sculpture of the bones of a Stegosaurus. The sculpture was then buried and used by other classes for a dig.
Curated OER
Dinosaurs
In this earth science instructional activity, students match each vocabulary term, that names something specific related to earth science, with its correct description found in the right column. They identify different types of...