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 Creating Authentic Tasks

 Essential Learnings:

  • Obtain a better understanding of how fossils are used to obtain information
  • How animals adapt to their environment. The cause/effect relationship.
  • Become more familiar with research techniques and sources.
  • Learn to communicate effectively through presentation of dioramas.

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Assessment Component:

Each student will keep a journal about each day's activities.

 

Each group will be responsible for presenting their finished project to the class. The project will be evaluated by a mock staff (students, the teacher, and the group).

 Critical Thinker

 Exit Outcomes and Related Proficiences

DINOSAURS
  • Flexible and creative in thinking process.
  • Uses a variety of sources.
  • Demonstrates the effectiveness of decisions or solutions.
  • Demonstrates an awareness of own thinking process.

Developmentally Appropriate Benchmarks:

  • Students generate questions
  • Students seek research to find the answers to their questions
  • The student is creative and organized
  • Students work cooperatively
  • Students are familiar with a variety of basic research materials
  • Students are self-directed in finding answers to their questions
  • Students are able to defend their point of view
  • Students are aware that they effect their community
  • Students are open to different points of view
  • Students are able to recorded their thoughts and learnings in a journal

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  Task Description: After a trip to the museum, and a guest speaker, the students will take on the role of lpaleontologists hired by the National Geographic society to create a dinosaur diorama for the Denver Museum of National History. they are to use a newly found fossil in order to do this. The students will research the dinosaur and decide what habitat was necessary in order for it to survive. once this is done, the students will need to create a model of the diorama that they wish to present to the mock museum board. The class may work in cooperative groups. One group of students will be the mock board and will have to research the dinosaur in order to make an informed decision.

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