Teacher Notes
This assignment is designed for fourth to fifth grade science students. Students will have 3 weeks from the assigned date to complete this project, with a majority of the work and research taking place in the classroom. The students will be expected to complete some work on their own to teach them responsibility, time management, and how to work with other people. The group with the most persuasive, most researched report and paper will win a prize, like tickets to a local museum that has dinosaur exhibits.
The purpose of this assignment is to give students experience in research, to learn how to work in a group, and to learn more about dinosaurs and their extinction. While dinosaurs are studied intensly during elementary school, there is not very much time given to learning about the different theories of their extinction because there are so many. This assignment will help the students learn all about the extinction theories and help them decide what they believe. This will be beneficial to the whole class, because they will also get to learn about all the different theories and decide what they believe as well after listening to the groups' presentation. The students in the group are suppose to act like detectives. The teacher could provide detective or police costumes for the students to dress up in during the presentation to make the setting more realistic! The teacher could dress up as the police chief as well and at the end of the presentation ask these questions:
1) Which one of these theories is scarrier to you? Why?
2) Which would you rather see...a giant impact on the earth or a supernova? Why?
3) What
would earth be like today if the dinosaurs were still here?
*All pictures are linked to their original location!