Teaching Ideas
This CD contains a range of resource material designed to help you get the best out of SwitchIt! Dinosaurs Extra. Here you will find suggestions for how you might use the program with your class. SwitchIt! Dinosaurs Extra has clear, animated graphics in each of its activities, which have been carefully designed to motivate and engage your pupils.
Introducing the activity to the children
Gather a group of children around the monitor, interactive whiteboard or plasma screen and tell the children about the fun activities they are about to take part in by showing them the selection of resources you have gathered for the activity. Start the program and show the children how to navigate through each activity.
- Select Switch Access at the side of the screen.
- Select one or two switch scanning for the Picture Menu.
One switch scanning will scan through the pictures automatically. Press the switch (or the space bar) when the story required is highlighted.
Two switch scanning requires you to press the left switch (or the space bar) to highlight the pictures in the Picture Menu. Then press the right switch (or the Enter key) to play the story highlighted.
Modifying the Picture Menu
Press the Esc key on the keyboard to go back to the Teacher Options and click on Subjects. You can then choose the Stories you would like to appear Picture Menu.
You can set up the Switch Access to assess different stages of development:
- Spectator:
The student watches the activity while a second person operates the switch.
- Participator:
The student takes part in the activity with a second person.
- Creator:
The student presses the switch to play the activity independently.
You can control the development of the following switch skills:
- Cause and effect
- Encouraging student to press, look and listen
- Turn taking
- Single switch scanning
- Two switch, alternate use
- Two switch, press as requested by the program
SwitchIt! Dinosaurs Extra is also an ideal tool for developing:
- Mouse skills
- Touch monitor/direct access
Creating multi-sensory lessons
Creating multi-sensory activities using a selection of sensory resources can enhance the learning outcome for these programs.
The stories in SwitchIt! Dinosaurs Extra make an ideal group activity for around an interactive whiteboard or plasma. Allow students to choose their own story by setting up the program to use Stories with Picture Menu. As each story plays, give each student time to experience, look, feel, touch, and listen to the related resources and story.
Get ready to go on an amazing adventure, which dinosaurs will you meet along the way. Listen to the sounds the dinosaurs make. Don't forget your hat, boots, camera and binoculars.
These activities could be built up over a number of weeks. Print off flash cards and laminate them.
Suggested list of items to use along with SwitchIt! Dinosaurs Extra.
EXERCISE CAUTION when water is used near a computer.
Tyrannosaurus Rex:
Tyrannosaurus lived approximately 68.5 to 65.5 million years ago. Meat eater.
Animals: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor and Leaellynasaura.
Environment: Dense jungle.
This story features three similarly shaped dinosaurs of different sizes. The small leaellynasura appears first, followed by the medium-sized velociraptor. Listen to the loud foot steps. Which dinosaur is coming? Will it eat the other dinosaurs?
- A selection of leathery textures relating to the dinosaurs.
- Drum (loud footsteps)
- Different sizes of toy dinosaurs
- Long grasses and leaves (forest)
- Leaves and a piece of meat (to show different eating habits)
Mammoth:
Mammoths lived in the Pleistocene era, around 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago. These are extinct mammals rather than dinosaurs, and lived much more recently.
Animals: Mammoth, baby mammoth.
Environment: Boggy plains. Unlike modern day elephants, mammoths were often found in colder climates.
This story features a mischievous baby mammoth who wanders off without his mum. He soon gets into trouble when he gets stuck in a tar pit. Will he sink further into the pit or will he be rescued? Can his mother save him? Many fossilised remains of extinct animals have been discovered in these tar pits which are still in existence today.
- Material relating to animals, fur, wool.
- Treacle (sticky tar)
- Rolling pin (mammoth tusks)
Archaeopteryx:
Archaeopteryx lived in the late Jurassic Period around 155-150 million years ago. It is remarkable for being half-bird, half-reptile.
Animals: Archaeopteryx and dragonfly.
Environment: Dense jungle among the foliage.
The archaeopteryx is in search of lunch. He sees a dragonfly and watches it fly around. Listen to the sound the insect makes. Will the archaeopteryx catch his lunch?
- Materials relating to the animals, fur, leather and feathers.
- Long grasses and leaves (forest)
- Large toy insects
- Whistles (bird sounds)
Velociraptor:
Velociraptor lived during the late Cretaceous period, about 83 - 70 million years ago. Meat eater.
Animals: Velociraptor
Environment: Volcanic mountains, long grass.
This story features two velociraptors looking for food. Both find the same food, but neither wants to share.
- Comb (sharp teeth)
- Materials relating to dinosaur skin
- Long grass's to hide in
- Piece of rope to play "tug of war". Copy the velociraptors (play outside)
Pterodactyl:
Pterodactyls are known for being flying reptiles. Pterodactyls lived in the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 145 to 65 million years ago. The pterodactyl was a meat eating creature. The plesiosaur lived in the sea and had flippers for legs. It was also carnivorous.
Animals: Pterodactyl, plesiosaur.
Environment: Sea, coast line
This story features three Pterodactyls preached on the cliff top. Taking turns to swoop down and catch the fish. Oh dear, one Pterodactyl ends up being lunch! This story demonstrates the animal "food chain".
- Swimming flippers (Pterodactyls wings)
- Water spray
- Toy fish
- Make a sock puppet to replicate the plesiosaur.
Sabre-toothed tiger:
The sabre-toothed tiger was not a dinosaur, but a carnivorous mammal living between 33.7 million and 11,500 years ago in the Cenozoic era.
Animals: Sabre-toothed tiger, prehistoric man.
Environment: Boggy moorland.
This story features a sabre-toothed tiger and a cavemen. A caveman is hunting when he comes across the sabre-toothed tiger. Will the tiger catch the caveman? The story demonstrates teamwork and safety in numbers.
- Material relating to animal fur.
- Record the tiger's roar into a BIGmac so no-vocal learners can play back the roar.
- Clothes for dressing up as a caveman
- Finger paints for cave drawings
Triceratops:
Triceratops lived around 68 to 65 million years ago. The Triceratops was a plant eater. Like modern reptiles, dinosaurs reproduced by laying eggs.
Animals: Triceratops, baby triceratops and eggs.
Environment: Sandy, light foliage.
This story features a family of Triceratops. The parents are watching over their nest of eggs while they hatch.
- Material relating to dinosaurs, leather
- Boiled eggs and egg shells
- Sand (for nest)
- A cone-shaped object, resembling a triceratops' horn
Stegosaurus & Brontosaurus:
Stegosaurus and brontosaurus lived during the Jurassic period around 156 - 140 million years ago. Both of these dinosaurs were plant eaters (herbivores). Stegosaurus grew to be up to 30 feet long and 14 feet tall. The brontosaurus was one of the largest land animals that ever lived. They could grow to over 80 feet long and weighed approximately 35 tons. The brontosaurus is known for its very long neck which it used for eating foliage high above the ground.
Animals: Brontosaurus, stegosaurus and leaellynasaura.
Environment: Dense forest, tall fruit bearing trees.
This story features a stegosaurus trying to reach fruit on a tall tree. A brontosaurus also wants the fruit and unwittingly helps the stegosaurus by knocking the fruit off the tree.
- Branches (tall trees)
- Materials relating to dinosaurs
- Fruit (to taste)
- Hose pipe (long neck of the Brontosaurus)
- Cardboard cut outs (bone plates of the Stegosaurus)
- Brush (end of the Stegosaurus tail)
Ankylosaurus:
Ankylosaurus was an armoured dinosaur, measuring about 7.5-10.7 m long, 1.8 m wide and 1.2 tall; it weighed roughly 3-4 tons. It lived around 70-65 million years ago.
Animals: Ankylosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex.
Environment: Sandy, light foliage.
This story features the meat-eating T-Rex who attacks the ankylosaurus. The ankylosaurus is protected by its armoured shell and retaliates by using its bony "tail club".
- Grass (Ankylosaurus food)
- Bike helmet (Ankylosaurus shell)
- Comb (Tyrannosaurus teeth)
- Materials relating to dinosaurs, leather.
- Two oranges in a single leg from a pair of tights (resembles an ankylosaurus tail club)
Ichthyosaur:
The Ichthyosaur was a marine reptile that lived approximately 230 million years ago and became extinct around 90 million years ago.
Animals: Ichthyosaur, ammonite and plankton
Environment: Under the sea among coral.
This story demostrates the food chain. Ammonites are seen feeding on tiny plankton. The Ichthyosaur tries to eat a ammonite, but it doesn't go down well.
- Water spray
- Toy fish
- Selection of materials (coral and plants)
- Disco ball (used in a dark room to represent underwater image)
- Shells
Ammonite:
Ammonites are an extinct group of marine animals often found as fossils. Ammonites existed around 400 million years ago and became extinct around 65 million years ago.
Animals: Ammonite, fossil and present day boy.
Environment: Under the sea, cliff front.
This story shows how over a period of time the fossils were formed.
- Water
- Shells
- Sand
- Plaster or air drying clay (to make a mould of a shell)
Skeleton:
Animals: Tyrannosaurus rex, skeleton
Environment: Dark jungle, museum
This story features a naughty little boy on an educational visit to a dinosaur museum. The naughty boy wants to take one of the dinosaur's bones home with him. What a mess he makes!
- Create a museum setting in a class room (photos, models, toy dinosaurs).
- Build a tower of bricks (knock them down)
- Pile of sticks (for dinosaur bones)
- Cameras (switch adapted if possible)