Jurassic Park Classroom Transformation

This was a fun flip! I teamed up with a colleague and that made it even better. Mrs. B and I came in on Sunday and got this done to my room in just a few hours.  Yes it does take time to do something like this and yes it almost guarantees you will get a surprise visit from the fire Marshall, but it is worth it when you see the kids amazement and engagement in the classroom.

I used phosphate font to type out letters and then cut out to make sign.  

This is an old box I found to make into a jeep-it was a bit difficult so next year I will be turning my writing table into a Jeep.

I needed my guided reading supplies so I covered my books and filing cabinet with volcano but left hole for my tools for guided reading and math.

We happened to have a box of bones in our kinder closet so it was perfect to add a few- random I know!! I also got the camo burlap on clearance from Walmart years ago and thought I may need it someday.

The only thing I had to buy for this transformation but didn't really have to was a roll of black tablecloth from Hobby Lobby and some streamers.  Another colleague who ended up jumping on the Jurassic Park theme also added a waterfall with Christmas lights and blue butcher paper.

 The morning the students came and saw Jurassic Park for the first time, I had them wait outside so they could all enter together.  I played the theme song on my promethean board.

Students put thing away and I had them come to the carpet.  I told them they were hired by Jurassic Park. We talked about how dinosaurs have been extinct but because of science we have been able to bring dinosaurs back from extinction.  I told them we must learn everything we can about dinosaurs before the dinosaurs come and the visitors come to the park.  During the next few days we did all kinds of dinosaur activities such as books, poems, digging up dinosaur bones, writing, making predictions about what different bones were, and various other activities.

On the final day of Jurassic Park, I had arranged for parent volunteers to come in and run some stations I had planned.  I even had my formal observation this day. I told my principals I have no guarantees of what she will see but come on in and join the crazy.

I am blessed to have an educational assistant who is wonderful with the students, here we are here ready for this fun and dangerous day.

I had here take the students to the bathrooms and read the history of Jurassic Park. (I found this book recently on a trip to Albuquerque)

While she was out with them I put out each mission and explain to the volunteers what they would be doing at each station. When students returned, I told them "the dinosaurs have gone crazy and are very dangerous. We must get off this Jurassic Park island.  To do this, we must complete 6 missions and we must hurry before they return." I gave each students a colored Jurassic Park ID badge.  I grouped them with high/med/low students in them, however the volunteers were there to make sure not just one student was doing all the work.  Students rotated through each station and they knew it was time to move when the heard the alarm.  This is the sound I played to clean up and rotate:

Mission 1: Sick Triceratops
Students had to put the Triceratops back together by adding one more and one less.

Mission 2: Stolen Egg
Students must find the canister that holds the stolen dinosaur egg. They are given clues to put the canisters in order and must measure and weigh the canisters to determine which is holding the dinosaur egg.

Mission 3: Jeep Breakdown
Students must connect the circuits to get the Jeep running again. To do this they had to understand basic features of sentences and sentence structure.

Mission 4: Capture the Dinosaur
The students had to track a dinosaur. Students had to sequence events to capture the dinosaur.

Mission 5: T-Rex Attack

Students must build a boat to escape the island.  This was a fun STEM exploratory activity.

Mission 6: Erupting Volcano

Students must rush to get all the dinosaurs back in their cages before the volcano erupts. 

Students also had field guides that were exit tickets for each station and had extra practice pages if they finished before the alarm went off.  These missions took about 2 hours and the students were fully engaged the whole 2 hours. It was amazing and the students still are talking about it 2 weeks later.  I am happy to have my room back to normal but I am already planning another transformation before the year ends.

Transformations take more time and energy so I do not do them often but they bring excitement to your teaching and to your students. The missions I talked about in this post are available for purchase in my TPT store. You can find it here.