What to Teach After the Montessori Second Great Story: Follow-Up Lessons and a Three-Year Plan

After presenting the Montessori Second Great Story, it can be difficult to decide what to teach next. Dinosaurs and fossils are often the most obvious—and most popular—choice, but the story offers far more than a single dinosaur unit. It provides a foundation for geology, evolutionary history, botany, zoology, ecology and practical work connected with the living world.

The goal is not to cover every follow-up lesson immediately. Instead, plan the work across the three-year elementary cycle, revisiting the story through a different scientific lens each year.

Structure with choice.

Choice boards , activity menus and carefully selected lists of ideas can make follow-up work manageable and rewarding for everyone. Offering completely open-ended choice—such as “Choose anything you are interested in”—can be overwhelming for some children. Providing a few clear parameters gives children a helpful starting point while still allowing them to follow their interests.

Begin with the Timeline of Life

 Present the Timeline of Life and preferably have a mute version where students can place labels and pictures on for the different periods. Look at what happened in the different periods e.g. Ordovician, Permian, Silurian. Students can also research animals of this era. Students may also wish to make their own timeline. These students worked diligently over weeks to make this timeline. Keep returning to the Timeline of Life throughout the year. When children study flowers, reptiles, mammals or invertebrates, invite them to locate the group on the timeline. This helps them see botany and zoology as part of one unfolding story rather than as separate topics.

Explore Deep Time with the Clock of Eras

Go back deep into time and how long or short certain periods of time. Carrying out projects on particular periods or drawing or painting a Clock of Eras helps children slow down and really appreciate the vastness of time. For more information about the Clock you can read this blog.

Linking the Clock of Eras to something tangible such as an animal that lived at that time can also be very helpful.

Study Dinosaurs and Fossils

Dinosaurs and fossils (get this fossil freebie) are a natural direction for many teachers and children. Children can investigate different types of fossils, explore how fossilisation occurs and make model fossils of their own.

They can also compare the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, examining changes in climate, landforms, plant life and animal life. Younger children may benefit from research questions, writing frames or partially completed diagrams to support their work.

Extend into Botany

The Second Great Story can be used as a launching pad for studying plants. Students can consider how plants helped transform Earth’s atmosphere and support later animal life. Botany follow-up work can move from classification and nomenclature into experiments, observation and care of living plants.

The Timeline of Life also shows when different plant groups appeared and how their features changed over time. Impressionistic stories can lead into lessons about seeds, roots, stems, leaves and flowers. Older children might investigate how plants have adapted to different environments.

Extend into Zoology

I really enjoy getting out the 'parts of' vertebrate sets and doing them underneath the relevant 'age of' section from the Timeline of Life with the child. This really brings them to life for the child. This can also lead to students making their own labelled animals perhaps a labelled dinosaur. 

Older children, or younger children with a strong interest, can extend this work into the major invertebrate groups, including Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Mollusca, Annelida, Arthropoda and Echinodermata.

Ecology

The second great story natural connects with Gardening, cooking with plants, stewardship and taking care of plants and animals. Looking at native animals and plants of your country and conservation efforts that are being undertaken can be really uplifting for children. 

You do not need to fit every possibility into the weeks immediately following the story. The Second Great Story is a starting point that children can return to throughout the elementary years. By planning across the three-year cycle and keeping the Timeline of Life visible, you can balance children’s interests with broad and meaningful curriculum coverage.