Online Learning Activities

Dinosaurs!

Scholastic offers young students a chance to study a favorite subject of theirs — dinosaurs — through several engaging online activities.

The “Dinosaurs!” activity features fun online activities for grades K–8, offering students a rich environment of standards-based skills. Students study the characteristics of some better-known dinosaurs, classify dinosaurs using a time line, craft questions to a dinosaur expert, and use prior knowledge to answer fun and interesting questions about dinosaurs.

• Dinosaur Times (grades 3–8), an interactive time line, allows students to organize dinosaurs into appropriate time periods with help from clues, helping them better grasp of the age of dinosaurs. 
   
• Ask a Dinosaur Expert (grades K–8) lets students meet paleontologist and marine archeologist Sue Hendrickson and read an interview with her.
   
• Students can browse illustrations from the book The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins (grades K-8) and read an interview with illustrator Brian Selznick. 
   
• Dinosaur Research Starter (grades 5–8) offers students ideas for topics and articles that will help them prepare to write a research paper on dinosaurs. 
   
• Students share what they’ve learned in the written activity, Dinosaur Write (grades K–5). They can also publish their work online and read other students' writings. 
   
• In Real or Make-Believe (grades K–2), students test their knowledge of dinosaurs with a funny, interactive quiz. 
   
• Students can take our multiple-choice test, Dino Don's Dinosaur Quiz (grades 3–5), which provides answers to relevant questions about dinosaurs. 
   
• Students get familiar with dinosaur anatomy with our interactive dinosaur-assembly game, Build-a-Dinosaur (grades K–2)
   
• Argentinosaurus (grades K–5), a nonfiction photo story, reveals a recent dinosaur discovery, and illustrates how scientists unearth, assemble, and display a dinosaur skeleton.

Learning Objectives

While participating in the “Dinosaurs!” student activity, students will:

• Develop goals for scientific inquiry
• Improve content-area reading skills, such as distinguishing between real and make-believe
• Develop a context for the study of dinosaurs
• Use technology to gain a basic understanding of dinosaur characteristics
• Understand how the study of dinosaurs informs scientific knowledge
• Use technology as a mode of inquiry to access information from experts
• Describe through writing accumulated knowledge of dinosaurs
• Improve content-area reading skills, such as reading for detail