Dinosaurs are a popular topic with young students of both genders and all ethnicities. Because they are extinct, dinosaurs generally take on a mythic character among children of this age; furthermore, because they are physically enormous and dominant, most students find them fascinating as almost fantasy creatures. Therefore, creating a thematic unit on dinosaurs for first and second graders was fun and rewarding. With the plethora of material available on the subject, tailoring a unit for my students also involved a thorough review of films, books, websites, and CD ROMs. I relied heavily on multimedia materials, as dinosaurs'...

I employed Internet and CD Rom sources in addition to picture books and a brief cartoon film. These visual tools proved engaging for most students, who would otherwise become bored with pure fact and data. I based the success of the lesson on the reactions of the students, most of whom laughed several times during the unit. Moreover, attention spans did not wane as much as they normally do.
The children also enjoyed trying to correctly pronounce some of the trickier dinosaur names. This evolved into a game in itself, as I provided a list of…