In Brief Literacy Lesson Ideas

TM Storytime Tales from Today: Leo’s Dino 1 Teaching Resources

Leo’s Dino is a story about a little boy who IN BRIEF moves to the countryside and makes an unusual friend – a dinosaur.

1 LITERACY LESSON IDEAS

Before you begin, get everyone in the mood for a dinosaur story by printing off our Dino Footprint Sheet at the end of this pack. Stick them to the floor of your classroom. Ask children who the footprints might belong to and how big the animal might be that made them. Introduce the idea that they could belong to a dinosaur. What do your class know about dinosaurs? Can they name any? Tell them the footprints belong to a Cetiosaurus called Twiggy and you’re going to read a story about him.

Read the story to your class and see our Word Wise sheet to discover the meanings of some of the less frequently used words.

After reading the story again, try our comprehension quiz and other literacy challenges on the Word Wise sheet

Perfect your letter writing skills and fire up the imagination with our Leo’s Letter task.

How does a big dinosaur like Twiggy move? Discuss it in class and ask the children to complete our Dino Moves sheet. How do other animals move? Can you come up with words for birds, big cats, rodents and snakes?

Imagine there’s a dinosaur living in your school playground. Write a story about it using some of the words on our Dino Moves sheet or use our Dino Finger Puppets or Masks to act out our dinosaur story.

If you like our story, try these wonderful dino stories too – Gigantosaurus by Jonny Duddle, Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds, and Tyrannosaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts. Also introduce your class to non-fiction books.Dinosaurium by Lily Murray and Chris Wormell is excellent, while DK and Usborne offer a range of informative dinosaur books.

Continued on page 2... © storytimemagazine.com 2018 TM Storytime Tales from Today: Leo’s Dino 2 Teaching Resources 2 MATHS LESSON IDEAS What’s your favourite dinosaur? Do a class survey using our Favourite Dinosaurs Tally Chart. Fill in the tally chart and add up the votes to see which dino is the winner. Perhaps the winning dino becomes your class name for the week or a whole term.

Test your maths skills by completing our Dino Addition sheet. How many brothers or sisters will Twiggy have? 3 HISTORY LESSON IDEAS

Twiggy the Cetiosaurus lived around 170 million years ago. Make a dinosaur timeline and stick our Dino Finger Puppets to it.

Find out about the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning. See the BBC Schools website for information about her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/mary_ anning/ and read her life story in the fantastic Stone Girl Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning by Laurence Anholt and Sheila Moxley. Can you write a short biography about her inspired by what you’ve discovered? 4 ART LESSON IDEAS

Model dinosaur eggs or bones from playdough.

Use our Picture Frame to draw your favourite dinosaur. Can you make it camouflaged, like Twiggy? Look at the art of Liu Bolin, who makes himself disappear in his art: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/nov/08/china-art

Colour in our Leo’s Dino: Colouring Sheet.

Decorate our Dino Masks with collage materials to make them look textured and scaly.

Continued on page 3...

Our dinosaur story is a brilliant introduction to key areas in the primary science curriculum – from EYFS through to KS2. Studying dinosaurs helps children to:

Understand the similarities and differences between the prehistoric period and today Learn about animals and their habitats Understand how environmental changes affect the natural world Know the difference between living and dead things Recognise how animals can be grouped according to what they eat (herbivores, omnivores and carnivores) Explore life cycles Discover the importance of the food chain, and predator and prey

Make our Dino Footprints lead to a sandpit or trays filled with gravel or sand. Hide plastic toy dinosaurs, real fossils, or Playdough eggs or dinosaur bones in the sand. Ask children to roleplay being on a dig. What will they find? Can they research their finds and write about them, like real paleontologists? Label the finds to make this easier.

Discuss how fossils and bones are the key to how we know about animals that lived before us, including dinosaurs. What is a fossil? Does anyone have any fossils they can bring in and show class? Talk about where you can find fossils. Find examples to show the class.

Learn more about the Cetiosaurus featured in our story and sauropods with our Cetiosaurus Facts, then fill in our Dino Facts sheet with five facts about your favourite dinosaur. Alternatively, divide the children into groups and assign a dinosaur for them to research together. Use non-fiction books or tablets and appropriate websites, such as the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/dino-directory/index.html

Use our Dino Diet sheet as a starting point for learning about herbivore and carnivore diets. How did dinosaur diets differ from those of animals today? How were they the same? Sort our dinosaur Finger Puppets into herbivores and carnivores too.

Our Dead or Alive sheet will also help start a discussion about living and dead things, and animals that are extinct. Which animals on our sheet are no longer alive?

© storytimemagazine.com 2018 © storytimemagazine.com 2018 ______he smellsandfeelsliketotouch? Describehimusingthesesenses. green, helooksfriendlyandisaslongtwobuses.Howdoyouthink In thestorywelearnhowTwiggy soundsandlooks–hesnorts,isbright DESCRIBE ADINO! leo’s dino: Word WiseSheet WORD WATCH Frowned–furrowedbrows Gawped–starewithmouthopen Expression–strip,undress Shuddered–shook Glumly–sadly grumpy Grumpingaround–being Contented– IMAGINE IT!

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1. How was Leo’s new home different to his last one?

2. What did Leo miss?

3. Why did Twiggy introduce himself to Leo?

4. Why do you think nobody believed Leo about Twiggy?

5. Why did Leo feel sad at the party at first?

In the story, Leo’s dad invents MAKE US a dinosaur called a seesaw-us. HA! LAUGH! Invent your own dino joke here. What do you call a dinosaur that’s noisy when it sleeps? A bronto-snore-us! © storytimemagazine.com 2018 TM Storytime tales From today: Leo’s Dino Teaching Resources NAME CLASS

Imagine you are Leo writing a letter to your LEO’S LETTER old friends. Tell them about Twiggy. What will you say about him? Can you give your friends a dinosaur fact?

Circle the words that describe how a dinosaur moves. Can you come up with your own word DINO MOVES too? Write it in the box below. thud Tiptoe Flutter Glide Gallop Tramp Stamp Prance Stomp Clomp

My word is...

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Leo’s Dino really did CETIOSAURUS exist a long time ago. Here are some facts to FACTS help you bring Twiggy to life.

The Cetiosaurus was first discovered in England in 1841 by a scientist called Richard Owen.

Richard Owen was so confused by the bones he found, he thought the Cetiosaurus was related to a giant crocodile.

It was the first sauropod ever discovered.

A sauropod is a dinosaur with a very long neck, a long tail and four legs.

Sauropods are herbivores – that means they don’t eat meat.

Other sauropods include the Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and the Brachiosaurus.

Sauropods travelled in herds, which is why three Cetiosaurus skeletons were found together in 1868.

They lived in the Middle Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago.

Dinosaur experts still haven’t found a Cetiosaurus skull, so nobody knows how big its head was. Sauropods are some of the biggest land animals WOW! that ever lived. The biggest sauropod was ten Dino experts think the times as heavy as an elephant! Cetiosaurus was about 18 metres long – as long as two double- decker buses! © storytimemagazine.com 2018 TM Storytime tales From today: Leo’s Dino Teaching Resources NAME CLASS

Now it’s your turn. Find out five interesting facts DINO FACTS! about a dinosaur and write them here. My dinosaur is the

Draw lines to match the dinosaurs to the food they eat. Twiggy the Cetiosaurus is DINO DIET a herbivore. Ravi the Tyrannosaurus Rex is a carnivore.

Twiggy ravi

at the time, including the triceratops and even other Tyrannosaurus dinosaurs! Tyrannosaurus other even and triceratops the including time, the at

fruit, berries and flowers too. Ravi the Tyrannosaurus is a carnivore, so he ate meat from other dinosaurs that were alive alive were that dinosaurs other from meat ate he so carnivore, a is Tyrannosaurus the Ravi too. flowers and berries fruit,

A herbivore doesn’t eat meat, so Twiggy would probably have eaten lots of leaves and shrubs, and possibly possibly and shrubs, and leaves of lots eaten have probably would Twiggy so meat, eat doesn’t herbivore A Answers:

Which of these animals is extinct and which DEAD OR ALIVE? ones are still alive? Circle the extinct animals.

Dodo Hammerhead shark

Komodo dragon Woolly mammoth

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Print our dino masks to act our story or make up your own dino story!

Print out and cut out several of these DINO dinosaur footprints and stick them to the floor of your classroom to introduce your FOOTPRINTS dinosaur topic.