Rock Your School Day Pirate Fun

 

Image from here.
(Please let me know if you need me to remove this image.)

If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know how much I idolize Hope and Wade King, teachers at the Ron Clark Academy who I met in March.  Early in the summer they, and other amazing educators I follow, announced that that on September 20th, they were going to have the first ever ROCK YOUR SCHOOL DAY! Their goal was to have teachers think outside the box and do something different.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do....

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is every year on September 19th.  I've celebrated it the past few years.  (You can click on the "Pirate" tag on the right hand side to see what I've done other years.)  We didn't have school on 9/19 this year, so I figured I would celebrate it on Rock Your School Day - but make it completely different!

For the first time ever, I did a room transformation!  I transformed my room into a PIRATE SHIP!  I knew I couldn't do it alone so on Tuesday, I had three mom's and one grandmother help me while my wonderful co-teacher took my class to another room and worked with them.

 

 

For a video tour of my room, click here.

I couldn't WAIT for my students to arrive this morning!  I wish I had recorded their reactions as they walked in!  They couldn't believe it!

During the morning, the students rotated through four stations.

Station one was with me.  We played a game called Dozen Doubloons.  Students could add up to three cards together to make 12.

 

 

 

 By the way, I promise you they have smiles on their faces!

For our second rotation, my co-teacher, Mrs. Racosky, turned my pirate addition center into a fishing game!  I filled up her water table with jewels, gold, shells, marbles, and popcorn kernels!

The students had to fish for an addition problem and the answer to that problem.  Then, they recorded their answers on the answer sheet Mrs. R. created!

 

 

Rotation three happened quite by accident.  I was at Dollar Tree and found the CUTEST little skulls!  I quickly turned that into a fun addition center.  (If you are wondering why I focused so much on math today, it's because it is the focus of our School Improvement Plan.)  Here is the worksheet I created for them.

 

Students were going to use the skulls to help them figure out ways to make numbers one through eight.  For example, if they were going to make five, they would take five skulls, and drop them on the yellow work mat.  They would see how many are on each side and write an addition problem on their blue recording sheet.

 

The final rotation was with Mrs. Racosky.  They played a Pirate themed game with context clues.  You can find that game here.

 

 After lunch, the students completed the STEM project from Deanna Jump's Pirate unit.  The students used clay to build ships. 

We were going to see how many pennies it would take before our boats would sink, but.....every single one of their boats, including mine, sunk right away!  OY!

 

They still had fun!  Oh well, some lessons just go that way sometimes!

Next we played a version of the Hot Lava game - pirate version of course!  The students had to use the items to "build a bridge," to help them get from their pirate ship (still in the "water,") to land.  It was hard, but they enjoyed it!

 

Then it was time for my favorite activity.  We played a LIFE SIZE VERSION of Hungry Hungry Hippos!  I have to thank Hope & Wade for the inspiration for this one.  Now, I had every intention of having the students complete work with this.  I even made a worksheet for it.

 

Each balloon had a number on it.  They were going to take two of the balloons, write the numbers down on their sheet, and add them together.   However, that part didn't happen.  They had a BLAST!

 

 

 

 

We also did a Pirate photo shoot.  Here are a few of the pics:

 

 The students had fun with two Pirate brain breaks!

Here is the first one.  Here's the second one.

 

I was playing pirate music throughout the day. You can find those songs on this playlist.  At one point, two of my students linked arms and started dancing.  It was SO CUTE!

 

The students had an AMAZING day!  Thank you to everyone who made this day possible!  I truly appreciate it!

~Captain Lynch~