Argh!

A few weeks late, but still in September! Talk Like a Pirate Day! We did a few things to celebrate, although I held out on everything in my pirate unit; for two reasons. A) There was just not enough time - that week we had a short week (for like the 3rd week in a row! Argh! hehe), and testing that still had to be finished, and who knows what else....it's all a blur really. And B) because we are going to be teaching the /ar/ phonics skills soon, so I want to revisit the pirate theme.  I will have to wear my pirate swag again that day for a picture. I didn't take one this time, because apparently when you are 6 months pregnant, you look like "Where's Waldo" instead of a pirate when you wear a white and red striped shirt! Lol




Anyway, I bought Babbling Abby's Pirate Unit from her TpT store. Can I just say....How Cute?!?! It's mostly fabulous for First grade, but I can use a lot of it in different ways. I altered some of her stuff, and we wrote these CUTE pirate stories "My Day as a Pirate."

First we read How I Became a Pirate. The boy in story spends his day as a pirate, but realizes he wants to go back home. Such a cute story.

Then we made a flow map (we're a Thinking Maps school) of the story onto "map paper" (aka - grocery bag that had been crumbled up).

Then, to tie in some social studies, we discussed compasses and directions, and landmarks (the book has a map which lent itself perfectly to the lesson). The students had to make a rough draft of where they were going to bury their treasure and had to have at least 3 landmarks, a trail, and X marks the spot, and a compass. Once we okay-ed their map, they were given the map paper (more grocery bags) to sketch out their maps.  

Then, FINALLY, onto our CUTE pirate stories. We did a 4-square, mapping out our beginning, middle, and end, we wrote one together (so they could see how I use my plan to go back to my writing), then they were allowed to add in their art part of it.  Loved them!! Thanks Babbling Abby!