By LEIGH LARDIERI and MARILYN CLOSSON

Teachers, Farwell School

Excavating bones? Reconstructing a T-Rex? Given the right tools, a little bit of effort, and a lot of enthusiasm, Farwell School second graders can become the most tenacious paleontologists one has ever seen! Last month, students from Marilyn Closson’s second grade and Leigh Lardieri’s special education classrooms shared their knowledge about fossils and dinosaurs, and then began a dig in search of the bones of an unknown creature.

Working in pairs, students learned the delicate art of excavation, gaining an appreciation of the difficult work that paleontologists face every day. Using tools such as brushes to clean their specimens, students soon discovered that finding and preparing bones is not a quick and easy task. As they extracted bones and fossils from their plaster casts, students began to piece together an unknown dinosaur. After considering all the evidence, they concluded that it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Pulling it all together, students wrote about what they had learned. In the end, all students were successful, and they came away from the lesson with a deeper understanding of the difficult and important work of a paleontologist.