Science Comics : Dinosaurs

by MK Reed

In Science Comics: Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers, writer MK Reed and illustrator Joe Flood explore dinosaurs through the history of the people who discovered and interpreted their fossils. This nonfiction science comic—not a fictional picture book—shows how fossil evidence, scientific disagreements, and new discoveries have changed our understanding of dinosaurs, including their connections to birds.

Big Idea

Science develops as people ask questions, examine evidence, and revise their explanations. Comics can make that process understandable by controlling how readers move between pictures, dialogue, facts, and moments of discovery.

Discussion Questions

1.How do the fossils in the book help scientists describe animals they have never seen alive? What might fossils leave uncertain?
2.Why have people's ideas about dinosaurs changed over time? Which changes in the book helped you understand how science works?
3.How do Reed's words and Flood's pictures work together to explain a difficult scientific idea?
4.What can the disagreements among fossil researchers teach us about curiosity, competition, and listening to evidence?
5.If you could add one page to this book, what dinosaur question would it investigate, and how would you help readers understand the evidence?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50 minutes; for K–2, consider two 25-minute sessions.📦 A copy of the book, paper or four-panel templates, pencils, crayons or colored pencils, modeling dough, shells or leaves or toy animal feet, and chart paper. Optional: sticky notes and a document camera.

Learning Goals

Explain, using an example from the book, how fossil evidence can change a scientific explanation.
Distinguish an observation from an inference about an extinct animal.
Combine pictures, captions, and speech bubbles to communicate an accurate scientific idea.
Use panel size and the amount of text to influence reading pace.
Revise a comic after hearing a partner's explanation of its meaning.

Activity Steps

1.Read selected pages aloud and examine the pictures together. Choose a sequence about fossil discovery or changing dinosaur reconstructions, and identify an earlier explanation, new evidence, and a revised explanation.
2.Press a shell, leaf, or toy animal foot into modeling dough. Discuss what the impression records and what it cannot tell us; clarify that this is a model of an impression, not a real fossil or a complete demonstration of fossilization.
3.Make a class chart with two headings: 'We observe' and 'We infer.' Practice separating visible features of the impressions from explanations about what made them.
4.Plan a four-panel comic based on the selected book example: earlier idea, new fossil clue, close examination, and revised explanation. For K–2, provide picture prompts and take dictation; for grades 3–5, ask students to label their evidence and record the source page.
5.Draw and write the comic. Make the evidence panel larger or less crowded so readers can pause, and label any invented dialogue as imagined rather than a historical quotation.
6.Exchange comics and read them aloud. Partners identify the evidence and the moment they slowed down; students revise one caption, image, or panel arrangement for clarity.

Standards Connections

CCSS ELA RI.1.7: Use illustrations and details in a text to describe its key ideas; apply this to the book's combined visual and verbal explanations.
CCSS ELA RI.3.3: Describe relationships among historical events or scientific ideas, including how discoveries lead to revised explanations.
CCSS ELA W.3.2: Write informative/explanatory texts that develop a topic with facts, definitions, and illustrations.
CCSS ELA SL.2.1: Participate in collaborative conversations, building on others' comments and asking for clarification.
NGSS 3-LS4-1: Analyze and interpret fossil data to provide evidence about organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago; use this lesson as an introductory connection rather than a full assessment of the performance expectation.

Printable Teacher’s Guide

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Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Science Comics: Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers offers a useful way to study pacing in informational writing. Reed and Flood must explain both prehistoric life and the changing history of human knowledge about it. The comic form lets readers move between broad explanations and smaller moments of discovery: a caption can cover a long stretch of time, while a sequence of panels can make readers linger over a piece of evidence. Invite students to notice when they read quickly, when they stop to inspect an image, and what the creators did to encourage that change. Because this is nonfiction, teach pacing as more than the speed of an exciting plot. A scientific term may require a pause; a question can create forward motion; an illustration can carry information that would take many sentences to explain. Examine selected spreads rather than asking younger children to manage the entire book independently. K–2 students can point, sketch, dictate, and perform short sequences, while grades 3–5 can compare explanations, track evidence, and revise their own informational comics. Throughout the workshop, distinguish documented information from imagined dialogue, and distinguish techniques visible in a selected passage from techniques students might experiment with themselves.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a passage that surveys dinosaur knowledge with one that focuses on a fossil discovery. Ask how panel count, text density, and the amount of visual information affect reading speed.
2. Plot	Treat the book's nonfiction progression as a story of changing knowledge: people ask questions, encounter evidence, and revise explanations. Trace one discovery-to-revision sequence rather than inventing a fictional dinosaur adventure.
3. Prosody	Read a factual caption and a speech bubble aloud with different expression. Let punctuation and meaning guide the voice without turning a tentative scientific explanation into a certainty.
4. Word	Choose a scientific word from the selected pages, such as 'fossil,' and examine how the surrounding pictures and sentences support its meaning. Practice pausing to explain an unfamiliar term before continuing.
5. Concept	Center the idea that an explanation can change when new evidence appears. Ask students to locate the evidence that makes a revised dinosaur reconstruction more convincing.
6. Voice & Worldview	Discuss how the book makes scientific investigation approachable while showing that scientists can disagree or make mistakes. Have students write a caption that sounds curious and evidence-minded rather than all-knowing.
7. Point of View	Separate the explanatory voice of captions from the perspectives of historical people shown in the comic. Ask what a researcher could have known at that time and what readers now know.
8. Setting & Place	Distinguish scenes of prehistoric environments from places where people later find or study fossils. Identify the visual clues that establish each setting without a lengthy written description.
9. Original Characters	Explain that the book depicts real researchers and extinct animals rather than relying on an invented fictional cast. For student comics, an original guide character may ask questions, but its statements must remain scientifically accurate.
10. Dialogue	Examine how speech bubbles make scientific discussions feel immediate. Remind students that dialogue in a nonfiction comic should not automatically be treated as a verbatim historical quotation.
11. Details	Select a pictured fossil feature and ask why that detail matters to the explanation. Students should include evidence-bearing details in their own comics rather than filling panels only with decoration.
12. Descriptions	Notice which features of a dinosaur are shown visually and which are explained in words. Practice replacing a vague description such as 'strange bones' with a precise description supported by the selected page.
13. Firsts	Track the first appearance of a new term, discovery, or reconstruction in the selected reading. Discuss what readers need at that first encounter, and avoid calling something the 'first ever' unless the text supports it.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Compare learning a fact in a summary with seeing people examine evidence in a scene. Ask which approach makes students feel closer to the discovery and why.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Mark a passage that summarizes developments and another that presents a particular encounter or discovery. Discuss how moving between these structures lets the book cover extensive history without giving every event equal space.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Use a changing dinosaur reconstruction to explore intellectual suspense: will the evidence support the old explanation? Ask students to name what surprised them and identify the information that created the surprise.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Trace any movement between prehistoric time and the later history of fossil research in your selected pages, distinguishing time shifts from simple chronological progression. If no cliffhanger appears, students can try ending a draft panel with an unanswered evidence-based question.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Pause before a page turn or section transition and predict what information should come next. Examine whether the next page introduces a discovery, shifts time, or expands an explanation.
19. Pace & Creativity	Ask students to present the same fossil fact in one panel and then in three panels. Compare how the expanded version can reveal a clue gradually without changing the underlying science.
20. Play	Let students match sketches of fossil clues with possible interpretations, then explain their reasoning. Keep the playful investigation grounded in the book's distinction between evidence and explanation.
21. Performance	Perform a selected sequence with one reader handling captions and others reading speech bubbles. Use a silent beat when the audience needs time to inspect a fossil image.
22. Personality	Discuss how expressions, gestures, and dialogue convey the personalities of people involved in fossil research. Separate the comic's characterization from claims about a historical person's private thoughts.
23. Humor	Locate a moment students find humorous and identify whether words, expressions, or juxtaposition create the effect. Ask how humor can make an explanation welcoming without replacing the explanation itself.
24. Pause	Choose an image that deserves a second look and stop reading aloud while students inspect it. Discuss how a caption-light evidence panel could create a similar pause in their own comics.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Although this is not a poetry book, examine any vivid comparison or sound pattern students notice in the selected text. As a writing extension, try an alliterative caption, then check that it remains clear and scientifically accurate.
26. Repetition	Track repeated scientific terms or the recurring movement from evidence to explanation. Discuss how returning to an idea can support understanding even when the particular dinosaur or discovery changes.
27. Rhythm	Read a sequence of short bubbles followed by a longer caption and listen for the change in rhythm. Have students vary caption lengths so a key fossil clue is not buried in a block of text.
28. Punctuation	Inspect punctuation in the selected captions and bubbles, then test how it changes an oral reading. Students can revise a draft question or explanation to make its intended pause clearer.
29. Questions	Collect questions the selected pages answer and questions they leave open. Use one genuine uncertainty about fossil evidence to motivate a student's comic rather than inventing a mystery the evidence cannot resolve.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare older dinosaur interpretations with later evidence-based reconstructions, including the book's attention to feathers and birds. Organize observations into 'What changed?' and 'What evidence explains the change?'
31. Objects	Follow a fossil as both a physical object and a source of information. Ask how giving that object a close-up panel can help readers focus on the feature that matters.
32. Threes	Use a three-part organizer—idea, evidence, revision—to clarify one sequence from the book. Present this as a helpful classroom structure, not a claim that the book always arranges information in threes.
33. Lists	Turn a dense explanation from the selected reading into a brief list of evidence or key developments. Compare the list's quick-reference pace with the fuller explanation supplied by the comic.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect space around text, within panels, and between panels. Discuss where uncluttered space helps the eye rest or makes a fossil feature easier to notice.
35. Art & Graphics	Study how Joe Flood's illustrations carry information about anatomy, scale, setting, and historical interpretation. Ask students to name something they learn from a picture that the accompanying words do not state directly.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom 'evidence detective' challenge using selected images: students earn a clue token by describing an observation and supporting an inference. This is an extension of the reading, not a claim that the book contains a built-in game.
37. Placement	Trace the reading order of panels, captions, and speech bubbles on one page. Ask how moving a clue image earlier or later would affect what readers understand and expect.
38. Form	Name the work's form as a nonfiction science comic and discuss how sequential art helps explain changing ideas over time. Compare a short prose explanation of a discovery with its visual presentation.
39. Dummy	Have students make a rough miniature layout, or dummy, before finishing their fossil comics. Use boxes, stick figures, and temporary captions to test whether readers encounter the evidence before the revised explanation.
40. Passion	Discuss how sustained curiosity drives both dinosaur research and the book's explanations. Invite students to choose a dinosaur question they genuinely care about, then identify what evidence they would need to investigate it.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: 'Slow Down for the Fossil Clue.' Minutes 0–3: Revisit a teacher-selected passage about changing dinosaur interpretations, preferably the book's discussion of feathers and the relationship between dinosaurs and birds. Name one earlier idea, one relevant piece of evidence, and the revised explanation, using only information supported by the selected pages. Minutes 3–6: Fold paper into four panels labeled 'Earlier idea,' 'New clue,' 'Look closely,' and 'Revised explanation.' Minutes 6–13: Create a nonfiction comic with short captions; make the 'Look closely' panel larger or less crowded so readers pause over a labeled evidence detail. K–2 students may draw and dictate, while grades 3–5 add a source-page reference and distinguish observation from inference. Minutes 13–17: Partners read each other's comics aloud, pausing to inspect the evidence, and explain where the pace changed. Minutes 17–20: Revise one panel and complete the exit statement: 'I slowed my reader down at ___ so they would understand ___.'

Classroom Activities

Fossil Clue, Changing View

Students create a four-panel nonfiction comic showing how a fossil discovery can change a scientific explanation. Inspired by the book's movement between discoveries and revised ideas about dinosaurs, students first make a model fossil impression, then build a comic around a teacher-selected example from the book. They use a large panel, a brief caption, and a deliberate pause to help readers notice the evidence.

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