Fossils provide a valuable record of the plant and animal life and environmental conditions from millions, even billions of years ago. In this lesson, students create their own fossils and then use multimedia resources to learn how real fossils form and what scientists can learn from them.
Fossils are preserved traces or remains of living things. Paleontologists who study fossils look for teeth, bones, shells, petrified wood, molds and casts, traces or carbon shadows, or even entire animals.
The classroom resource provides a slide show that will describe fossils and how they form. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to explain that fossils can provide evidence about past environments and organisms.