Swashbucking Adventures on the High Seas and Pirates in Historical Fiction and Nonfiction and Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing: Meeting Student (and Teacher) Learning Needs to Achieve Best Practice in the Twenty-First-Century Social Studies Classroom

September 21, 2010 at 12:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Before you begin anything, what better way to introduce the topic, than to get your students curious. I think  beginning with a KWL,  invites students to explore and question the topic thus furthering there curiosity. I liked how before starting the pirate unit the authors discussed  playing pirate music in the background while students explored a set of items: books, maps, artifacts, all relating to pirates.

I really enjoyed these two article for the neat activities and ideas they provided. I think that double entry diaries are a good way to keep track of all the information you are getting out of a book because sometimes stick notes just don’t do, I mean tend to fall out and just aren’t big enough for you to write everything that you need to write.

The last article is very information because  provides examples from a pirate unit. This unit is very powerful because it has many components to it and will at some point meet the diverse needs of most students. First the students learn how to conduct researches online by  doing a specific activity created by the teacher. It is good to know that internet workshops are inquiry based, therefore students are in charge of their own learning.  Students also get a chance to share the information they found through discussions and or through a classroom blog. There is also several instances of collaboration in the unit because several collaborating teachers have had their students write “I” poems. This unit expands to other core subject areas such as literature, has a strong technology element and collaboration between teachers.

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