The Brown Bag Teacher

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R-Controlled Vowels: /ar/ Pirate Week

Welcome to Pirate Week, friends! It was a fabulous week of singing, eye-patches, searching for gold, and hunting for those pesky /ar/ words! One of the most amazing parts of 1st grade is that life is till magical. 1st graders have the ability to transform into pirates with the walk of the plank or the donning of an eye-patch. I knew the week after Winter Break was the perfect week to channel this magical-ness for learning!

My 1st graders knew it was going to be a special week walking into our classroom with our Pirate-themed door inspired by Pinterest. (I cannot find the original pinner/website. If you know, please let me know, so I can give credit where it’s due!)

Every Monday morning, as soon as my friends walk into the classroom, they dash to our classroom library to see the books I’ve chosen for our display shelf. In all of their spare moments, students steal moments to read these books to themselves and their friends. Many of the books are WAY above their designated ‘reading level’, but it’s amazing to watch them plow through the books because they are interested in them. 

Our theme song was this awesome little ditty on YouTube. It’s all about /or/ and /ar/ words, and has a perfect pirate tune that will keep you and your friends singing all week long! 🙂

At the beginning of each day after we sang our theme song, a student also reviewed our Words of the Week using our Captain’s Hook (a HIGHLY coveted responsibility).

We then started the week brainstorming /ar/ we could see around us or think of. We made a list on our SMART Board and I made this matching chart that night. We also kept an /ar/ Word Collector throughout the week, but I forgot to take a picture – oops! You can read about our Word Collectors here.

The highlight of our week was definitely Wednesday when we donned eyepatches I ordered from Amazon and went on a school-wide TREASURE HUNT!?!?! I grabbed my handy Captain’s Hook
(from Amazon) and led the high-seas adventure. 
All of my cohorts in crime grabbed a pencil, a clipboard, and their own treasure map! We searched the school looking for pirate booty and were *very* successful in our adventure. 😉
Each time we found an ‘x’ that marked the spot, we raised our pirate hooks in the air (our curved pointer fingers) and on the count of 3 whispered “ARRRRR”. Then, we gathered around to read and record the word, as well as, share sentences that used the word. 

Ultimately, our treasure map  led us back to our classroom where we found a REAL treasure chest!!!! (For once, my school-supply-buying problem paid off. Over Winter Break, I purchased a chest of post-its and it came in this awesome container!) Ever so carefully, we opened the chest – just in case it was filled with skeleton bones or snakes 😉 – to find freshly sharpened, personalized pencils from Graphite Pencils.

In Word Work, students had the chance to add to their reading notebooks with this interactive notebook page – /ar/ words vs. other R-controlled vowel words. We also sorted our words of the week on a pocket chart, but I was leading guided reading, so no pictures for you. 😉

Using some pirate-themed vocabulary, we also enjoyed writing pirate narratives during Work on Writing during our Daily 5. We’ve been working on adding dialogue, zooming into smaller moments, and adding specific details – pirate week was a perfect time to practice!

As a behavior motivator, I also typed up a dozen or so hilarious (by 1st grade standards) Pirate jokes. When I spotted someone who was being a fabulous leader in our classroom, I would point to them and say, “Joke Time!” They snagged my Captain’s Hook, pulled a joke from the jar, and shared it with the class. It was a simple motivator that helped keep us learning!
You can snag all of these activities for your own pirates and learning at my TpT Shop or by clicking below. This unit has been 1st grade tested and loved. It was such a FUN week, and added a little more magic to our 1st grade lives. 😉
Happy sailing, friends!

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Comments

  2. Sheri Ryan says

    January 11, 2015 at 10:58 pm

    This looks so much fun. Can I join your class for pirate week next time. I'm definitely going to keep this item wish listed for when we are learning those r controlled vowels 🙂
    Thanks for the awesome ideas 🙂
    Sheri

    Reply

  3. Kelly says

    January 24, 2015 at 10:18 pm

    LOVE this! When you do special weeks like this do you try to theme all your learning to that theme? (for example—was Math, etc. pirate themed as well)?

    Reply

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