How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? Lesson Plan
Students will enjoy ranking the dinosaurs from this popular book by Jane Yolen.
- Grades: PreK–K, 1–2
Students enjoy dinosaurs in general, and How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? easily lends itself to a graphing activity. Students enjoy rooting for their favorite dinosaur as the graph is put together.
Students will "collect, sort, organize, and draw conclusions about data using concrete objects, pictures, numbers, and graphs." --Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework
- How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen
- chart paper
- copies of end papers from the book
Set Up and Prepare
Make a copy of the end papers in the front of the book. (It's the page featuring all the labeled dinosaurs sitting at tables.) You will need to make one copy per student. Cut the copies apart so that all of the dinosaurs have been separated.
Be careful with the taping. You don't want the results to be skewed by the placement of the pictures.
Tape one of each of the dinosaur pictures along the bottom of the chart paper. Have a discussion about which dinosaurs were favorites and why. Students can then take turns choosing their favorite dinosaur by picking one of the small copies, and taping it to the chart paper. Help students to tape them in columns, making sure that they are spaced evenly. (You want to be able to accurately see how the dinosaurs compare.)
When all the students have taped their favorite dinosaur to the chart paper, have a discussion about which dinosaurs were the most and least favorites and how it can be determined.