September 19th is International Pirate Day and you can get your language learners to practice talking like a pirate as well as other learning. Toddlers to teens enjoy learning about pirates. For teachers who teach CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning), lessons about pirates help students learn science, math, geography, history, and culture. Language learners can also study cartography and create maps where they label different areas. Below are several pirate-themed resources for teaching your language learners. For more lesson ideas and activities, check out our webinar recording, Ahoy Matey! Pirate Lesson Plans and Web Sites.
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Web Sites and Activities
- Students can create their own treasure hunts with these resources:
- Click here for a cool craft activity for making an authentic-looking map! You can use grocery brown bags.
- Students can add invisible ink to their maps. Find invisible ink recipes here.
- They can draw a map and use Thinglink to add pop-up text clues like this example. Find instructions on making an interactive map with Thinglink here.
- Students can create their own pirate-themed comic strips with these tools:
- Friendstrip is a free iOS/Android app to make comic strips. They have a pirate prompt for students to add their own captions and pictures.
- Toondoo is a free web tool to create comics and books and has pirate characters and backgrounds.
- Makebeliefs Comix has a few pirate-themed objects and characters. Create a comic online or use the free iPad app.
- Students can create their own pirate stories. Try Story Jumper, a free web tool for creating embeddable books. Students can choose from different pirate-themed backgrounds and characters.
- Students can talk like a pirate with this English to Pirate translator.
- Get students to build their own pirate ships with paper, styrofoam, and other materials and test what makes their ships better. Find a lesson with background information here.
- Students can go on an interactive adventure and learn pirate history with this National Geographic game.
- Find tons of activities for creating pirate-themed classroom games for children here.
- The Pirate Museum has several pirate-themed lesson plans for K to 12 here.
- Learn English Kids has pirate-themed songs, stories, and activities.
- Find a list of pirate-themed books for K to 12 here.
- Find pirate online learning games for children here.
- Click to discover pirate games and activities for young children from Disney’s show, Jake and the Neverland Pirates.
- The Pirate’s Realm has a variety of resources including pirate history, flags, the pirate’s code, and a list of pirate museums.
- DLTK has printables, crafts, games, and more for children.
- A to Z has various lesson plans to learn with a compass and exploring maps.
- Teaching Ideas has a variety of pirate-themed handouts and activities like filling out a pirate profile, coloring pages, and a describe the treasure activity.
- Discover more about famous pirate ships here.
- This 10-day unit about pirates has many different activities and resources.
