Bedford Village Students Practice Valuable Skills During “Dino Day”

“We are paleontologists! We’re going to use tools to explore dinosaurs,” Bedford Village Elementary School teacher Nicole Gillespie excitedly told her class of first and second graders. “Let the exploring begin!”

A variety of dinosaur-themed stations were set up around the classroom for students to choose from. They were designed to help students practice fine motor skills, letters, problem solving and more.

“Our first and second grade detectives are currently exploring the Unique Learning System unit on Light and Sound, using the high-interest topic of dinosaurs to create a cohesive, interdisciplinary experience,” Gillespie said. “This unit is designed to be a cumulative learning experience, where academic content from the Bookworms Reading Program and Bridges Mathematics is purposefully integrated with therapeutic goals from speech-language pathology and occupational therapy.”

As dinosaur noises played in the background, you could hear the scratch, scratch, scratch and the tap, tap, tap of students trying to excavate dinosaurs from eggs using tweezers and brushes.

In other areas of the room, students practiced coding, finding letters in a bucket of sand, doing puzzles, building dinosaurs, writing in their journals and more. Some students used core word boards or augmentative and alternative communication devices (AAC) to ‘roar’ or talk about dinos.

At times, students became a little frustrated with their endeavor, but Gillespie helped add language to their feelings and urged them to press on.

“You’re frustrated that it’s taking so long,” she said to one student, who was trying to dig out his dinosaur. “Let’s scrub, scrub, scrub. Paleontologists have to be patient. They work so hard.”

At other times, students chose to move on to other stations. Their ability to choose not only gave them a voice but allowed them to move around and made the whole experience high interest.

“Our instructional design is built on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, prioritizing student autonomy, voice, and choice,” Gillespie said. “By embedding speech and OT work—such as using core vocabulary for ‘dinosaur school’ social scripts or ‘excavating’ fossils with specialized tools—into the academic curriculum, we ensure that every student can engage deeply with grade-level standards in a way that respects their unique sensory and communication needs.”

Each student adventurer had an Exploration Log to fill out that showed where their journeys took them.