All about that hook

Man i love inquiry time! This week we started our new inquiry unit 'think like a paleontologist'! Lots to learn, so many avenues to go down and lots of interest areas we can branch into. It is of course, all about the learners. 
​But to get them going, you always need a hook! And boy had I sorted a good one this time! 

We first did some prior knowledge, KWL chart building and exploring some pictures of a Paleontologist from Google. Students created wondering questions around what we could delve further into in the next sessions and future for our unit. I then said that I had received an awesome email from some really special - a Paleontologist!

Of course you get the usual student "oh that's not real", "I bet it was just you" so I even went to the lengths of creating a fake google account under the name of the Palaeontologist Pete - had to make it look legit. 
We then read through the email and unpacked some of the information. As I didn't have an actor around, I obviously had to play the part of the Palaeontologist for the video so really need a strong back story to justify why me and the Palaeontologist would look similar! And they fell for it! 

After watching this hilarious (and poor acting skills) video, I had heaps of students say that there was no way he could have come to school and put an egg. I said well then we need to go and investigate to see whether Pete was true or not. So off we went. 

So once we had found it we then had a huge discussion around the egg. Where did it come from? How did it get there? With over 50 questions they came up with! It really started to unpack our thinking and wonderings for this topic. So we carefully took the egg back to class and crafted an email reply back to Palaeontologist Pete. I was so impressed with some of their questions. I feel sorry for Pete having to reply back (hahaha). 

So there we go! A great entrance into our inquiry topic, thinking bigger about Palaeontology. Sure it is about finding fossils, but got to hook them into the learning somehow! And dinosaurs come from eggs also. There are so many avenues this can go into and I really look forward to seeing where this goes over the time!