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When I grow up I want to be a palaeontologist!
“I act, I observe; I understand”

The teaching program has been prepared in collaboration with teachers, facilitators and scientists.
These teaching tools combine the transmission of knowledge, observation and experimentation.

3 teaching packages have been created:

Discovering dinosaurs

The history of dinosaurs and their footprints

Dinosaur prints

The aim is to let children discover the work of a palaeontologist, understand how a palaeontological study unfolds, acquire an understanding of heritage conservation and acquire a grasp of the various time scales and evolution of animal species. They also explore the close relationship between the animals and their environment.

These teaching packages are mainly intended for class use by primary level teachers (2nd and 3rd cycles).
For all the themes tackled, the teacher or facilitator has a file providing specific documentation with a full description of the information to be given to the children. Various supporting media are provided to assist the children’s learning: games mat, geological time scale poster, history of life poster, stamps for making dinosaur tracks, dinosaur figures, CDs with images, etc.

Teachers still retain great flexibility in how lessons are taught. They can in fact use all or part of the package.
They can find any information they need to supplement their work by visiting a “Jurassian Arc” palaeontology site, or the “Paléomania, in the tracks of the palaeontologists in the Jurassien arc” exhibition.
The www.lejurassique.com. internet site is well worth looking at.

The packages have already proved extremely successful during the “Paléomania, in the tracks of the palaeontologists in the Jurassien arc” exhibition in Chevenez (Switzerland).
BEJUNE, the Jurassien Arc teacher training school supplies them to schools in the cantons of Jura, Berne and Neuchâtel.

In France, it’s a department of the Jura General Council, the department for the Conservation of departmental natural history, coordinator of the INTERREGIIIA program, that distributes these teaching packages throughout the Jura Department.

Any suggestions regarding the improvement of the contents of these packages are welcome. Don’t hesitate to contact us!

Conseil général du Jura (Jura General Council)
Conservation départementale d’histoire naturelle
17 rue Rouget de Lisle F – 39000 LONS-LE-SAUNIER Cedex 09
tel 00 33 (0)3 84 87 42 91

mjlambert@cg39.fr ou cbretin-dur@cg39.fr

	The aim is to aid the understanding of the numerous facets of palaeontology. There are many objectives:

	Be capable of estimating when the dinosaurs were present on our planet on the scale of the Earth’s lifetime.
	Discover how they lived (food, reproduction) and what could have led to their extinction.
	Spot the morphological criteria of the different families of dinosaurs.
	Understand how the dinosaurs travelled around.
	Understand how the dinosaurs have left their tracks in the ground and understand the formation of dinosaur tracks in
	the sediments.
	Know what an animal track is.
	Spot the tracks of the different dinosaurs, identify the passing tracks in the rock and piece together the history of the
	dinosaurs’ presence.
	Understand the formation of the Earth’s crust and plate tectonics.
	Learn how to identify different strata .
	Know how to retrace the history of a landscape.
	Picture the profession of the palaeontologist as a whole, its interests and its constraints.
	Demonstrate all the stages necessary for drawing up a palaeontological study.
	Acquire some notions about heritage conservation.
	Comprehend the close relationship that exists between animals and their environment or judge the necessary
	characteristics of this relationship in terms of survival.