How to use our lessons to meet your goals!To help you understand the features of our lessons and how they can help you help your students, we've put together this overview of our lesson structure and features. The predicable format makes planning easier and gives you the flexibility you need to implement lessons in a way that works for your classroom. Read on for information about:
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Survey Sheets and Animal CardsTips for using these files:
Videos and pdfs give you lots of ways to interact!We're thrilled to share video versions of our weekly comic series with you on the comic page! You can view the comics with your students directly on the comic page or grab safe links to share on the Mission: Penguins? Comic Tips page each week. The videos are great for all ages and include sound effects and character voices to bring the stories to life! These videos are just 3-4 minutes long and are a great compliment to the pdf versions! Each week's comic is also available to download as a pdf in several formats on the comic page. Just click the button below the video to grab the file. You can print just the pages you want or delete the formats you don't need then push the file to student devices or your learning management system. Each pdf has the following formats:
 Student access made super easy!Update 10/28/2020: As of yesterday it appears that Safari requires you to enable viewing on some devices to see links through Video.link. This is a nuisance, but we have two solutions for you! Solution 1: If only a few of your families are impacted, use these steps to resolve the issue: viewing-videolink-on-safari.html Solution 2: Instead of sharing the links below, download the videos here (gg.gg/MissionDinoVideos) to add to your SeeSaw or Google Classrooms. Each video is compressed to be less than 250 MB in accordance with See Saw's file limitations. School may look quite different to some of your learners this fall. We want to give you the tools to meet student needs no matter how (or where) they are learning! Each week, we'll post links to field videos on this page so you can push them to student devices or post to your learning management system without having to set up accounts or passwords for your students. The internet is a wonderful way to explore the world, but kids need to be safe! That's why we're sharing links for our videos via Video.link to support your distance learning this mission! You can send parents here to collect the links or copy and paste them and share via the platform of your choice. The videos are also visible by clicking on the video thumbnail. To ensure kids' safety, we advise teacher and parents not to share this page directly with your young students if they are unsupervised. Children should also be supervised if watching videos or livestreams directly on the site.
Trouble shooting at the device level.Due to some recent changes to the Safari browser and Video.link (formerly Safe YouTube), some people are having issues playing the safe video links we shared. If you are blocked from viewing our safe links, try the steps below to resolve the problem. Step 1: Open a new Safari tab or window and paste in this link: bit.ly/DinoHypothesis. You should see something like the image below. If you press continue and it loops you right back to the same page again, don't despair! Just follow the remaining three steps.  Step 2: Click on the word "Safari" at the top of your screen and click "preferences" from the drop down menu.  Step 3: Select "Auto-Play" and then "Allow All Auto-Play."  Step 4: Finally, click on "Content Blockers" and make sure video.link is not blocked. If video.link is listed, highlight it and click remove. That's it!  If these steps do not resolve your issue, take a screen shot if you know how and contact us at Curious@go2science.com.
Need to share livestream sessions with students?This is the place! If your students are working remotely and you need to share our livestream archives with them, simply grab the link and share it through your learning management platform. Each bit.ly link takes students to a Safe YouTube version of the archive. If you need an alternate format, please drop us a line at Curious@Go2Science.com and we'll do our best to accommodate!
Lesson adaptations to support social distancing.Each week, we provide two new lesson opportunities. Some will be very easy to adapt to a distanced classroom setting. Some require a bit more thinking. We're here to help with that! Remember, you can skip any lessons you choose and still provide your students with a great mission experience. Even under normal conditions, it is rare that a class do EVERY lesson associated with a mission, so be kind to yourselves. Less really can be more! That being said, I'll add to this page weekly so you can find adaptation ideas for the lessons you DO choose to do.
My all time favorite homemade play dough recipe is the one my mom used to make play dough for me as a child. She wrote the recipe out for me when I started teaching. I’ve yet to find one I like better! 
Remote: This activity makes a great family project. The spine uses nine pieces of paper and the skull three more for 12 pages of fun and learning! Challenge students to work on this over time at home. Encourage siblings and adults help with the cutting and assembly. Make sure they share photos comparing their spine to things around their house and yard!
Remote: Tape yourself setting up a box with sand for exploration of wind erosion as described in the lesson materials. Then challenge students to build a similar device at home. The variety of box sizes and shapes, straws, and objects within the model should lead to some interesting follow up discussion! Bonus challenge: What can be used in place of the sand? Flour? Sugar? Potting soil? Be sure to celebrate the learning from models that “fail” as those are great learning opportunities!
Remote: If students have access to the food and seed cards, you can adapt the original game to be a table game a child can play with two or more household members.
Day 12: Publishing
In person with distancing: After a group planning session determine which students will make which elements for the final display. Students can complete components individually, then add them to the group display. Remember to share your results on the Publish It! page. We’d love to see what you create. Remote: Instead of creating a physical poster, try creating a slide show or even a BitMoji style poster session. Students can take screen shots of the evidence or write and draw about it in their journals. Have students determine which elements they will contribute to the collective final display. Remember to include a statement of the hypothesis, a description of the testing method, the evidence collected, analysis of that evidence, and conclusions! We can’t wait to see what you create! Here's one more tool for your digital learning tool kit!Update 10/28/2020: As of yesterday it appears that Safari requires you to enable viewing on some devices to see links through Video.link. This is a nuisance, but we have two solutions for you! Solution 1: If only a few of your families are impacted, use these steps to resolve the issue: viewing-videolink-on-safari.html Solution 2: Instead of sharing the links below, download the videos here (gg.gg/MissionDinoVideos) to add to your SeeSaw or Google Classrooms. Each video is compressed to be less than 250 MB in accordance with See Saw's file limitations. We're trying something new for this mission! Each comic will have a Story Time with Beth and Curtis edition. As we create each video, we'll link it below and provide you with a Safe YouTube link to share with students directly or link to our Mini Mobile Headquarters! Want more Story Time with Beth and Curtis content? Click here!
Making Data-Driven Decisions
Sounds Like FUN!Sound effects are a great way to engage students in all sorts of reading skill work! I had an "ah-ha" moment early in my teaching career that showed me how powerful silly words and sound effects could be. Read on for some ways you can use sound effects to support YOUR students! Keep on reading for the story of my "ah-ha" moment.
Grades 1 and 2: Crazy dialog! Challenge your students to make up their own sounds for all of the critters in the comic. Have them use what they know about spelling to make up nonsense words for each kind of critter. While we have no evidence that any of these critters used verbal communication, we do know that some animals living today (including prairie dogs, dolphins, whales, and non-human apes) have their own sorts of language. What if the long extinct critters in the comic did too? What would it sound like? What would they say? How could those words be spelled? For added fun write these words in printable Post Its! Check out last week's comic tips post to get your template. My Ah-ha Moment
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Meet Beth and Curtis!Presidential Award-Winning teacher and hula hoop fanatic, Beth loves bringing real world science to kids! Beth is fascinated by engineering challenges, technology, and outdoor learning spaces. After 25 years teaching kindergarten, she’s excited to share her passion and experience on-line with classrooms from around the world! Archives
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