1. CREATING A PLAY CENTER: DINOSAUR EXPLORATION LINDSEY SHOTWELL UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA TTE 309 SPRING 2015

2. RATIONALE  Read Dinotrux by Chris Gall every day because children ask  Wanted them to discover more about real dinosaurs, not just fiction  Want them to see what it’s like to step into the role of a paleontologist or scientist and dig up fossils  Not something completely new, just a new study in our science area  Build on a genuine interest

3. MY CASE STUDY & DINOSAURS  Not outwardly interested in dinosaurs when we read Dinotrux  When new materials are introduced – always tries them out  May like the sensory aspect of digging through the dirt because she like to get messy with art each day

4. DINOSAUR EXPLORATION CENTER  3 Books: Dinosaur Parade by Shari Halpern 50 Words About Dinosaurs by David Armentrout The Big Dinosaur Dig by Esther Ripley  3D Egg Puzzle  Large Dinosaurs  Small colorful dinosaurs  Measuring materials  Sensory bin with sand and “fossils”

5. DINOSAUR EXPLORATION CENTER

6. INTRODUCTION TO CENTER  Read the Dr. Seuss book Oh, Say Can You Say Di-no-saur  Then introduced the materials one by one and possible ways the children might explore them Free Exploration classroom set-up  Rules for digging – What should they be? Children help create rules

7. WHAT HAPPENED?  I wanted to provoke with questions, but then stand back and see how they interacted with new materials  They wanted me to be hands on with them and explain each new concept or word Flexibility and sharing my excitement about topic

8. WHAT HAPPENED?

9. LITERACY OPPORTUNITY  After reading a book one day called Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems the children were very excited to talk about the word ‘extinct’  When writing their journals, a few children wanted to draw dinosaurs and write the word extinct over it, so we pulled out the easel and wrote the words ‘dinosaur’ and ‘extinct’ on it  Even when the children weren’t drawing about dinosaurs, they wanted to try out what it felt like to write a new word like extinct that had letters we had yet to talk about  We were able to build off of this by talking about the letter ‘x’  Children excited to explore with writing which many children don’t do very confidently – positive experience!

10. OBSERVATIONS:  Children could remember words and concepts that are really difficult to understand  One boy sat with me and read 50 vocabulary words about dinosaurs from a book & came back and could recite words and meanings  Some children would simply bring up one of the dinosaur books to me during individual reading time and ask me to read it aloud Quieter approach to exploring the interest they had

11. “I’M A SCIENTIST!” – CHILD STORY  Super Mario pulled out the different colored small dinosaurs and began to line them up on the science table  I asked him what he was creating  His response, “look teacher! I’m being a scientist!”  How are you being a scientist?  “I lined up all the dinosaurs, look at them, it means I’m a scientist!”

12. SUCCESS!  The children LOVED it! We even were able to extend to many other areas of learning because the children had so many theories and questions “Biped” – Can we be bipeds if dinosaurs are bipeds?  Took their lead from their interest = more meaningful  Kindergarten Prep – reading a story about how dinosaurs would go to school, making a kind of scary and exciting concept funny and relatable

13. OBSTACLES…  We are in a shared classroom with an A.M. class and P.M. class, so our classes have different interests  Had to collaborate with P.M. teachers to make sure dinosaurs would also be exciting for their students  Had to work with keeping some materials not dinosaur related in center because children were still interested in P.M. class Learning experience: how to be flexible and work with others while still providing meaningful lessons