Curated OER
Dinosaur Tracks and Critical Thinking
Get your young scientists excited about geology through the study of dinosaur tracks! They will use their power of observation to learn how tracks are made and use critical thinking strategies to suggest a scenario in which they were...
Curated OER
Fossil Formation
A fossil is worth a thousand words! Individuals craft their own amber fossil of an insect in addition to molds and casts of seashells. A third activity takes the lesson a notch higher: Learners measure stride lengths between tracks and...
Curated OER
Dinosaur Tracks: From Stride To Leg Length To Speed
Students determine the relationship between leg length, stride length, and speed in humans and bipedal dinosaurs. They collect data and graph these human characteristics then use actual data collected from dinosaur track pads and fossils...
Curated OER
MUD-A Walk
Students investigate their tracks to determine the number of footsteps it takes to travel the entire length of their bodies. Then they determine the taller of two children and the shorter of two children with their tracks. Students also...
Curated OER
Investigation 4 - Dinosaurs Tracks
Fourth graders make inferences and interpretations from sets of dinosaur tracks. They describe Utah fossils and how they were formed. Partners trade their sketches of tracks and try to guess which dinosaur it belonged to.
Curated OER
Studying Fossils: Dinosaur Tracks From Stride to leg Length to Speed
Students explore dinosaurs. Students determine the relationship between leg length, stride length, and speed in humans and bipedal dinosaurs. Students analyze collected information. Based upon the data, dinosaur tracks, and fossils,...
Curated OER
Join the Dinosaur Age
Students role-play and complete various activities associated with dinosaurs and paleontology. They listen to the book, "Dinosaur Bones," participate in a simulated dig site, explore various websites, sing dinosaur songs, and create clay...
Curated OER
Footprint Detectives: Making Inferences Using Dinosaur Trackways
Pupils analyze and discuss footprints and dinosaur tracks. They listen to books about paleontologists, create and analyze their own trackways using black paper and chalk, examine the data, and form hypotheses about footprints and...
Curated OER
Creating Dinosaurs from Tracks
Students learn how scientists compare dinosaur tracks to those of modern animals, how scientists create a full model of a dinosaur from its tracks and how the age of dinosaur tracks is determined.
Curated OER
Footprints: Take a Step into Estimation
Compare sizes of student footprints with those of elephants and sauropod dinosaurs! Upper graders make estimations of the areas of irregular shapes; students use grids to make and explain estimates within low and high ranges.
Curated OER
Animal Tracks - Walking and Running
Students, using paper and water, make tracks and record the time needed to make them. They compare tracks made walking and running to determine the speed of the animal.
Curated OER
Fossil Footsteps
Fourth graders create their own dinosaur tracks using clay. In addition, 4th graders compose a story about the dinosaur / animal who created the tracks. They study photographs of dinosaur tracks before beginning.
Curated OER
Making Tracks
Students participate in groups to show how two legged and four legged dinosaurs walked. Using fossilized footprints, they identify the two and four legged dinosaurs shown. They use the internet to determine what happen by a specific...
Curated OER
Making Tracks
Fifth graders examine the fossil footprints of two and four legged dinosaurs. Using this information, they try to determine how the dinosaurs lived their lives. They use their own walking pattern to compare it to the dinosaurs and...
Curated OER
Dinosaur Prints
Students examine dinosaur footprints and compare them to the shape of elephant footprints and to the size of their own footprints.
Science Friday
Fossil Detectives
What can this rock be? Pupils pretend to be paleontologists by sketching fossils and making predictions about their types. To determine whether they can identify the type of dinosaur, class members compare their observations and...
Curated OER
Investigation 3 - Examining Your Fossil
Fourth graders examine the fossils they made previously. They examine the details of the fossil with a hand lens and come up with conclusions about the fossils. They record what they see and draw conclusions about the environment of the...
Curated OER
What Do We Learn From Fossils?
Students investigate what a fossil is and how it came to be. For this fossil lesson, students examine pictures of skeletons and identify characteristics that can and cannot be determined by a fossil. Students complete diagrams of a...
Curated OER
MUD-Research Center Lesson Plan
Students research chosen sub-topics on mud. They research topics such as idioms about mud, crime solving using tire tracks and animal homes made of mud. Afterward, they choose a presentation method such as a Word document, PowerPoint...
Curated OER
Science: Down Home Dinosaurs
students participate in hands-on activities to discover the different types of fossils. Using teacher-provided materials, they make models of cast and trace fossils. After writing essays describing how traces are formed, students plan a...
Curated OER
Make a Cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex Fossil
Second graders examine the formation of fossils and list the different types. They make cast model of a dinosaur fossil. They write about conditions that are necessary for fossils to form and create a model of a buried fossil.
Curated OER
Dino Long Legs
Students calculate the stride length of a walking or running animal. They use scale models of dinosaurs to calculate the leg and stride length of the animals.
Curated OER
Superhumans and Bionics: Building Hi-Tech Exoskeletons
Students explore how the body works. Students experiment and participate in activities to compare speed to stride length. Using the data collected, students draw conclusions about the biology of dinosaurs, their speed and stride length.
Curated OER
Fossils
Fourth graders act as paleontologists and attempt to figure out the environment where various fossils would have existed. They explain how fossils can be used to make inferences about past life, climate, geology, and environments.