Our new unit was inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, the seed was planted.
Topic: Pirates
Context: EFL/ESL
Approach: PBL
Level: Upper Elementary
My 5th graders helped me decide what they wanted & needed to know about it, I included the standards for my EFL classes and Volià!
A bunch of my 5th graders had a slumber party where they watched «Pirates of the Caribbean» for their first time, the next Monday they came to school eager telling me all about it, they couldn’t stop…so I said, It’s settle! Next Unit, All about Pirates.
They basically wanted to discover:
- How to talk like a Pirate.
- What was the meaning of some weird expressions they heard.
- How did they live?, where were they from? where is the Caribbean sea exactly?
At the beggining they had all sort of information, mostly from the movie & it occured to me I could undust & review the also successful Fact & opinion unit we had 2 months ago, spicing it up with reality vs fantasy from the movie and some books and magazines we had in our library.
Since it was an EFL class, I introduced the vocabulary with flashcards (bellow) so we were ALL on the same page (students had different english levels), correcting spelling, dividing into syllables, working pronunciation, etc.
I used 3 books about Pirates at this point:
- Pirate Patch whole serie by Rose Impey & Nathan Reed (These books are AWESOME to work with ESL and EFL)
- The Beastly Pirates by John Kelly.
- Portside Pirate by Barefoot book because it also brings a CD.
We used the vocabulary organizer included in the English Language Portfolio, we worked on this portfolio a little bit each day. Notice there are 44 pages with different activitites for vocabulary, listening, reading and writing.
To reinforce vocabulary, there are 3 activities:
- A wordsearch with the vocabulary learnt and
- A crossword.
- Label parts of a ship
- Label the 7 seas
Listening: You are a Pirate song
Reading: The end of the golden age with activities to do during & after reading. There are activities are both full color or B/W, some only B/W. Answer sheets are provided.
Once vocabulary was consolidated, I gave them the K.W.L chart to find out what exactly they were curious about. We read it aloud and shared our common interests. I presented them a picture of a ship and gave them time to label it, they had no idea what or where so they worked on deduction from stories they had read. Then, we corrected their guessings.
I created and compiled this Pirate facts Google slides to introduce them to the world of Pirates. Understand that in my classes I dont’ just stand and speak facts, no! they have to research, read, ask & wonder. That keeps them busy and hooked to the topic specially at this age & level. I make emphasis on critical thinking.
These 42 slides help students fill in some worksheets of the Pirates’ portfolio & to complete the Pirate Lapbook*
For the Pirate Lapbook, we researched one by one the Pirates before assembling it together. It took us a whole week but they were having so much fun, I respected their time.
There are two choices you can have this Pirate Lapbook: If you buying it HERE.
I opened every lesson with a round of questions and comments we had and shared (I took notes of all their questions in case I hadn’t covered them with all the resources) and the result was this.
Our grammar game: to add more complexity into the unit & level, we worked with complex & compounds sentences, conjunctions, relative clauses but in a Pirate theme. Using a Dice they picked one story element to build complex and long-well – structured sentences & share them with the whole class.
Check out THIS video!
Our writing: In the Portfolio are included hypothesis cases to research, what would they do in different scenarios using a more semi-controlled approach , also free writing from a story based on a picture & depending on my students’ level, we work with alternative ending writing of a story Pirate Patch in this case. We share all the different creative endings in class and give different awards.
TEACHER TIP: You could do something similar with the books you have around, tell the story without an ending, read them everyday so they work on fresh new ideas, then ask them to illustrate it like if it were the last pages of the book.
At the end of our Proyect based unit (PBL) for upper elementary, they:
- created scripts for a play (group work),
- rehearsed a lot
- designed their own scenery & finger puppets
- Presented the play to Kindergarteners & 1rst graders – we filmed them.
All my resources are NO PREP, so you just have to adapt it to your students’ needs & you’ll see how at the end it is all worthy!!!
I hope these ideas had inspired you! – Love
Elda
