Year 1 Pupils Produce High Quality Writing
A return visit today to Winnington Park Primary School in Cheshire to work with Year 1 and Everything Dinosaur mentioned by Ofsted. This is the second time that a member of the Everything Dinosaur teaching team has visited this school. Our last visit was in June 2014 to help reinforce learning and summarise the teaching work undertaken as the children had studied all things dinosaur over the summer term.
Studying Dinosaurs and Fossils
Today’s activities were a provocation, helping to motivate and enthuse, as the children had just started studying dinosaurs and fossils. However, the pupils displayed a remarkable degree of knowledge and applied learning, even at this early stage of the term topic. Under the expert tutelage of the teaching team, the children had been creating fact books all about dinosaurs and learning how to tell plant-eaters and meat-eaters apart. We helped the eager, budding young palaeontologists explore fossils and dinosaurs, leaving them with an extension activity that involved measuring and comparing different sets of dinosaur footprints.
Year 1 Have Been Painting Various Prehistoric Animals
The Kelenken in all its glory.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur
Everything Dinosaur Mentioned in Ofsted Report
The day after our dinosaur workshop last year, this school had an Ofsted inspection. The overall rating was “Good” for the school and the inspectors highlighted some outstanding teaching, the visit from our dinosaur expert “Dinosaur Mike” to the school the day before the inspection was discussed and the Ofsted inspectors commented that most of the children had made good progress and produced short pieces of good quality hand writing.
Everything Dinosaur Mentioned In Ofsted Report
Lots of examples of hand-writing on display.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur
Commenting on the benefits of a school visit from a company like Everything Dinosaur, the report states:
“Pupils enjoy writing, especially when it is linked to a visit, or a school visitor. This was the case in a Year 1 English class where pupils were talking and writing about a recent visit from “Dinosaur Mike”. Most pupils made good progress and produced short pieces of writing of high quality. One pupil was able to explain that “Dinosaur Mike is a palaeontologist.”
A themed dinosaur workshop with Year 1 has certainly helped to motivate and inspire the young learners.
Some of the prehistoric animals used in the teaching sessions can be found here on the Everything Dinosaur website: Prehistoric Animal Models, Toys and Gifts.