Summary:

Walking with Dinosaurs – Listening and Reading Comprehension activity. This is a great activity to engage readers in digital literacy and to extend their vocabulary. Perfect for a relief teacher who walks in on a day-to-day basis or a full-time teacher.

Australian Curriculum Links:

Year 8 – Apply increasing knowledge of vocabulary, text structures and language features to understand the content of texts (ACELY1733)

Year 7 –  Use comprehension strategies to interpret, analyse and synthesise ideas and information from a variety of textual sources(ACELY1723)

Year 6 – Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse information and ideas, comparing content from a variety of textual sources including media and digital texts (ACELY1713)

Lesson Outline:

Introduction.

1. Talk briefly about dinosaurs. Use general discussion terms.

2. Have children work in groups to complete a KWL activity – What they KNOW about dinosaurs + What they WANT to know about dinosaurs.  Save the L for later. (10 minutes)

3. Hand out the movie closure worksheet and discuss the sheet with the children. Talk about the words that might fill in the blanks. This cues the students into listening for the right answer.

Lesson

4. Watch Walking with Dinosaurs (WWD) episode 1. As the students watch the video they complete the movie closure worksheet. Younger students should watch the movie in small segment. The WWD series is freely available from most stores but can be bought from ebay quite cheaply.  Depending on the age of the children, stop and discuss the words children select in segments. Continue through WWD as appropriate. Usually 60 minutes.

Assessment:

This is a listening and comprehension activity which requires the teacher to use formative assessment about reading and listening comprehension skills throughout the activity.

Resources:

1. Walking with Dinosaurs – Teaching Sequence

2. Walking With Dinosaurs – Closure Activity

3. Walking With Dinosaurs – Closure Activity Solution

4. Walking With Dinosaurs DVD  (you can purchase this through most DVD stores or ebay)

5. Walking With Dinosaurs – Subsequent resources (crossword, word searches, reading jumbles)