Pirates

Pirate Activities Galore!

The activities associated with What If You Met a Pirate? and Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter are fantastic.  The use of a Double Entry Diary, or DED, is an excellent idea.  This allows students to keep their information organized.  When obtaining and recording large amounts of new information, it’s very important that the facts be easy to locate and read.  I’m amazed at how many wonderful projects can be incorporated into this unit; certainly a lot of projects that I never would have though of.  I love how the children get to break into groups and form their own crews.

While working on the DED myself, I’ve realized just how beneficial this process will be for young readers.  I’ve found myself paying much closer attention to the details within the text.  Truly reflecting on my thoughts and feelings about what’s going on from page to page makes the reading experience much more tangible.  By dissecting phrases or words that I think my students wouldn’t grasp at first has made me realize that I need to reevaluate the accuracy of my own reading.  All too often I’ll skip over awkwardly worded sentences or words I can’t immediately decipher simply because I can do this and still make sense of the rest of the text.  Younger readers won’t be able to do this as easily.  So what have I recently learned to combat this dilemma?  MODELING!  These Double Entry Diaries are wonderful for me as a teacher to record my own thoughts and reflections to bring up while I’m participating in a shared reading with my students.

• Here you check out a clip from the Time Warp Trio episode based on The Not-So-Jolly Roger!
• My Double Entry Diary

I Am Blackbeard [First Draft]

I am no ordinary pirate.

I smell the briny ocean air as it caresses Queen Anne’s sails.

I hear the grunts and gurgles of my crew as they quarrel over our latest loot.

I see a vast ocean before me.  Mine for the taking.

I dream of commanding a massive fleet of impenetrable ships.

I am no ordinary pirate.

I pretend I am a fearsome beast, towering over my prey with a mangled, ebony mane.

I feel the smoking fuses protruding from my beard as they scorch my skin.

I wonder how much havoc I can ignite before sundown.

I taste traces of rum on my parched tongue and crave its spicy quench.

I am no ordinary pirate.

I understand I am a wanted man.  A feared man.  A villainous man.

I want my name to go down in history.

I hope to be pardoned for my wicked ways.

I try not to dwell on the haunting thoughts of the gallows.

I am no ordinary pirate.

_______________________

Maggie Hinshaw

I am Blackbeard [Revised]

I am no ordinary pirate.

I smell the briny ocean air as it caresses Queen Anne’s sails.

I hear the grunts and gurgles of my crew as they quarrel over our latest loot.

I see a vast ocean before me. ‘Tis mine for the taking.

I dream of a grand soiree on Ocracoke Island filled with boisterous fellowship amidst my loyal brethren.

I am no ordinary pirate.

I pretend I am a fearsome beast, towering over my prey with a mangled, ebony mane.

I feel the smoking fuses protruding from my beard as they scorch my swarthy skin.

I wonder how much havoc I can ignite before sundown.

I taste traces of rich, Jamaican rum on my parched tongue and crave its spicy quench.

I am no ordinary pirate.

I understand I am a wanted man, a  feared man, a villainous man.

I want my name to go down in history.

I hope to forever outwit and evade those who yearn for my demise.

I try not to dwell on the haunting thoughts of the gallows.

I am no ordinary pirate.

_______________________

Maggie Hinshaw

Meet Sam Bellamy and his crew…

Yes, that’s a little boy.  Curious aren’t you? You’re probably thinking, “What’s a little boy doing on a pirate ship?”  Well, I guess you’ll just have to check out those links down there and find out.

Here are a couple of links that provide wonderful information about Sam Bellamy and The Whydah.

• Learn all about “Black Sam” Bellamy and his crew.
• This is all about the exhibit I went to this summer!

My thoughts on “Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing”

While it’s rainy and quite gross outside, I’m perfectly content and cozy here in my room.  With a steamy mug of green tea at hand, I dove into the article, “Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing.”  Extremely enlightening, if I do say so myself.  The more I learn about using blogs in the classroom the more excited I become.  This article not only gave more great advice about using the beloved blog, but also gave a number of great ideas about incorporating other technological resources in the classroom.

I love the concept of using technology with social studies.  It’s like this collaboration of something old and something new that creates amazing learning possibilities.  I’m glad that the article addresses the fact that the main focus should be the social studies content, though.   Social studies should be the lead singer, with technology singing back-up.

I have to say I knew absolutely nothing about Internet workshops prior to reading this text.  Now it’s pretty clear how the use of these workshops can allow students to interact with social studies content in an entirely new and innovative way.  I found the advice on book marking certain sites very helpful.  Again, I had no prior knowledge of these things.  This article is also full of useful resources that I can access with ease.  This list of Internet search engines for kids will certainly come in handy!

Oh, yeah.  I’m so glad this article provided some reliable social studies websites.  It can be really frustrating searching for legitimate websites these days.  Each of these sites were very informative and fun to explore.

Using all of these great activities won’t be easy, though.  It’s going to take a lot of knowledge and research on my part to be sure I’m effectively using these teaching strategies.  But, boy the extra time will be well worth it!  I love the “I” poems and digital storytelling activities.  These activities will really immerse the children into piracy; or any other subject for that matter.  That would be such a cool activity for students and teachers.  Oh, and I think it’s a great idea to have children post on their class blogs about current events.  Kids need to be informed about what’s going on in the world around them.  Thankfully, there are sites like this that provide a more kid-friendly version of the news.  Awesome.

Needless to say, I enjoyed this article, but I said it anyway.  I’m pretty pumped about implementing some of these brilliant ideas in my own classroom some day.

Technology + social studies + pirates = fun.

Maggie