Text type:
Fact / Informational text 

Word count:
1804  

Page count:
22 

Text Summary
Pirate Ships and Flags is a factual text that details the range of ships used by various pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy. This book describes ships from numerous regions and their advantages in the practice of looting. It also describes some of the drawbacks of life on a pirate ship.

Vocabulary
barbarian
bow
bowspirit
corsairs
galleys
hull
junks
longboats
mast
notorious
prow
surrender
versatile

Reproducible Worksheets
Worksheet 1 - Describing Pirate Ships
Worksheet 2 - Reading a diagram  

Lesson Objectives

Comprehension
Students will demonstrate the ability to find facts and details in passages that describe and support the main point of the paragraph, in this case, the details of different pirate ships.

Word Work
Students will demonstrate the ability to identify a noun as a person, place, or thing.

Visual Literacy
Students will demonstrate the ability to gather information from a diagram that identifies parts of a ship.

Before Reading

Elicit Prior Knowledge and Build Background
Ask students to describe to each other the different types of boats they've been on. Have volunteers describe the boats to the entire class. Make note of the details as they point them out to the entire class.

Introducing the Book
In preparation, write the vocabulary words and the following words on cards or slips of paper to be reviewed: pirates, Caribbean, Greece, Viking, Africa, China, Asia

On your board or on a piece of chart paper, write the word nouns as a large heading. Draw a three-column table labeling each column as person, place, and thing.

Explain that the story they'll read today is about pirates or thieves of the seas and the different types of boats they used. Explain that it's based on true facts and is therefore a non-fiction story.

Read through all of the vocabulary words and noun cards you've written. Point out these are all nouns that they'll find during reading. Have them position the nouns in the correct columns as people, places, or things, explaining that a noun can be easily identified as a person, place or thing. You might also introduce the capitalization rule of proper names as nouns versus general nouns that aren't capitalized, i.e., Viking versus pirate.

Skim and Scan
Share the cover page with students by pointing out the title, the author, and the picture. Indicate the posted list of nouns and remind them to watch for these words as they read. Explain that these words will be used to describe the different types of boats that pirates used.

During Reading

Set the Purpose
After you've gone over the vocabulary and introduced the non-fiction aspect of the book, have students underline the different ships as they read. This will help them quickly refer to the description of the ships as they work through Worksheet 1 - Describing Pirate Ships. Also, remind them to look carefully at the pictures or diagrams in the story. They will need to refer to these to complete Worksheet 2 - Reading a diagram.

After Reading

Building Comprehension
To reinforce how the text describes, go over the worksheet, which illustrates each pirate ship. Have students review the text about each ship and write a two or three-sentence summary describing the correct picture. You may choose to do the first one as a class or, depending on your preferences and students' abilities, you may have students work in pairs.

To check for understanding and review vocabulary at anytime after reading, you might ask:

• Which ship did the Corsairs use? Where were the Corsairs from?
• Who used a ship called a galley?
• Which ships had a hull? a mast? a prow, a bowspirit?
• Why are pirates notorious?
• Why might pirates be called barbarians?

Word Work
Initiate a discussion about the vocabulary in the glossary. Have students go over each word and put each definition in their own words.

Introduce Worksheet 2.

Learning through Visual Devices
Using diagrams of each ship in the book, go over how the diagram labels the parts. Draw a simple boat shape on the board or on chart paper. Have students label the parts including the hull, masts, bow/prow, and bowspirit. They can add other boat parts that they know even if they're not mentioned in the story. For example, they might say oars, starboard side, crow's nest, etc.

Writing Link
Ask students to talk about what a modern pirate ship would be like. Have them write a brief paragraph or two about their perfect modern day pirate ship. Then have them illustrate or create a collage to show the parts of the ship. Collect the modern-day ships in a class book and take time to compare the details of the olden-day ships to the new.

Assessment

• Review students' completed comprehension worksheets to assess if they understood the reading.
• Have students write sentences or paragraphs using selected words from the vocabulary list or word work examples from the lesson to demonstrate their understanding of word meaning.