Fun with Fossils

Schools are now closed, but here's a Y6 lesson on fossils I managed to fit in just before the last day.

You'll need some actual fossils, ideally, though you could get away with good, clear photographs. (Also, not every child needs a fossil, in spite of what the lesson plan says. They could work with one between two or even three, if necessary.)

You could also print out one or both of the two coloured sheets below: the first shows the geological ages and the second gives the main facts about the four fossils I used - crinoids, ammonites, belemnites and gastropods. 

Here is the lesson plan:

This is a link I gave to the children so they could research the fossils.  After they had done their research notes, we shared what they had found out and looked at each other's fossils. Lots of them already knew lots about prehistory so we had quite a discussion on the topic.

Then they all did the warm-up exercise and shared their lists of 'things that are usually grey'. Not all their ideas were concrete; some were abstract, e.g. "grey as despair".

Finally we wrote the poem all together, a line at a time, in silence. We only shared at the end. As usual, I told them that if they got stuck on any line, they should just miss it out and wait for the next one.

Here are just three Y6 poems that I have permission to share. One is a first draft and the other two have been revised and copied up.

Thumb Print Stories

This was a two-part exercise. In the first session last week, we just played with the ink pads, testing various effects and inventing characters. I advised the students to try and come up with four characters, all based on thumb prints, and to choose their favourite.

Then I asked them to make some notes about their character - name, age, sex, where did this character live, who were his/her enemies and friends, likes and dislikes, and finally to jot down the skeleton of a plot.

This week I gave out booklets and they started to write up their illustrated stories. It was a really quiet session because the children got very involved in their writing. They all said they'd finish the booklets off at home.

If you need to source ink pads, you can get them pretty cheaply here. I just bought a few new brown ones because they do for animals or humans. But your school may have some in anyway. If you're doing this activity at home and don't have an ink pad to hand, colouring the thumb with a felt tip or paint would work!

Aliens in our Midst!

The children regularly ask for this writing game. I've done it about werewolves, vampires, zombies, and as a murder mystery, but the basic idea is that you give out slips of paper, one of which identifies the recipient as the baddie and which needs to be kept secret from the other children. 

The pupils all have to write persuasive speeches to deliver to the rest of the group (the "community"), setting out their ideas for dealing with the villain. Some will choose to be lenient, wanting to integrate the baddie into the community under various precautions, while others will want the interloper dealt with more harshly. At the end of the speeches, the group discusses what they will do as a community and then they vote for the best plan.

As a final bit of fun, they take a guess as to who among them is the baddie. (The clue is obviously that it'll be someone who's given a speech appealing for clemency, and the sharper students will pick this up.)

You don't actually need envelopes - they just add a bit of drama - and you don't have to use edible paper; ordinary paper will do fine. I happen to keep rice paper in my baking cupboard!