We always start a new topic with a discussion on what we already know.  We do this for all curricular areas and particularly for topic work.  This enables the children to share their own learning to ensure that activities planned provide an appropriate challenge.  It also allows me to see if any gaps (or muddled ideas) need to be explored.  This is what we already know about dinosaurs:

As you can see we already know a huge amount of information about dinosaurs.  You can also see there are some gaps in our understanding – almost all of us think cavemen lived during the dinosaurs lifetime.  Many of us think that T-Rex would eat humans! 🙂

We also chatted about what we want to find out about dinosaurs.  Many of us showed an interest in finding out more about dinosaur babies and eggs.