Kindergarteners love to talk about pirates, especially when the discussion is based on a fun story! One of my favorite pirate read alouds for kindergarten is How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. This engaging story inspires so much meaningful comprehension practice for kindergarten students! In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite How I Became a Pirate activities to use in a kindergarten classroom.
The Benefits of Read-Alouds in Kindergarten
Read alouds aren’t just a fun way to fill time in the kindergarten classroom. They are a powerful tool for literacy instruction, particularly for comprehension skills. When students listen to a story being read aloud, the reading work is done for them so they are free to do the thinking work. This opens the door to meaningful discussions about the text that can strengthen their comprehension skills.
As we see in Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope infographic, comprehension is an essential strand. This strand intertwines with other essential literacy skills in order to develop skilled reading. Time spent reading out loud to your class is time well spent, especially when you can pair the read aloud with meaningful reading comprehension activities.
5 How I Became a Pirate Activities
How I Became a Pirate is a fun story written by Melinda Long and illustrated David Shannon. In this story, a young boy named Jeremy Jacob was recruited from his day at the beach to help pirates bury a chest of treasure. While aboard the ship, he learned how to talk and act like a pirate. The story is full of comparisons between pirate life with the day-to-day life of a school-age boy. After a storm, Jeremy Jacob and the pirates came up with a solution for where to hide the treasure.
1. Pirate Anchor Chart
An anchor chart can be a helpful addition to your read aloud unit, because it provides a nice visual that students can reference as they transition to an independent activity.
For example, this anchor chart provided a place for students to document their inferences during the read aloud. They could then refer to those ideas when they completed their own inference writing activity.
2. Making Predictions
While reading a book together as a class, it’s always fun to stop the story to practice making a prediction. In How I Became a Pirate, you could pause the read aloud after Jeremy Jacob says that he wants to be a pirate forever.
Students can predict whether they think Jeremy Jacob will end up being a pirate forever. They can also use their own background knowledge and details from the text to explain why they made the prediction they did. Students can write and illustrate their predictions so they can revisit them after finishing the story. They can determine if their predictions were correct or if the author surprised them. Using this language takes away some of the fear of being “wrong”, which can get in the way of students wanting to make predictions.
3. Inferring
This story includes a great opportunity for students to practice making inferences by using clues from the story. In this case, students will infer why the pirates sleep with one eye open in the story.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, you can document their thoughts on an anchor chart as you discuss this phrase from the story as a class. Then, students can write and illustrate their inferences on their own piece of paper, referencing the anchor chart as needed.
4. Story Retelling
After experiencing the story a couple of times, students will be ready to practice their retelling skills! Students need several important skills in order to retell a story, so it’s helpful for them to practice retelling whenever there’s a chance!
You could use picture cards that correspond to events from the story and invite students to put them in order. These picture cards fit perfectly in a pocket chart, so you could do this as a whole class, in small groups, or even as a center rotation.
Once students have had a chance to review the story events with the picture cards, they can complete another retelling activity independently. They can cut and paste the story event pictures into their literacy journals or onto a separate piece of paper. Once they have put the story events in order, they can practice retelling the story events to a partner. The completed journal activity can be a helpful tool for them to reference as they practice retelling the story.
5. Pirate Craft
A fun way to wrap up your read aloud unit is with a fun pirate craft that doubles as sentence practice. Students can practice following directions while strengthening their fine motor skills as they assemble the pirate craft.
Then, they can put a scrambled sentence in order and paste it to the craft. The final product looks great on a bulletin board! Students are always so excited to see their work on display.
How I Became a Pirate Lesson Plans and Activities
If you want to share this engaging story with your students, I can save you a lot of prep time on your read-aloud lessons and activities! All of the activities mentioned in this post (and many more!) are included in one set of engaging resources for How I Became a Pirate.
This interactive reading lesson plan will guide you through your daily instruction in reading comprehension, responding to literature, sentence studies, and more! These research-based plans are perfect to use for a pirate unit or even a fun pirate-themed day in your classroom.
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, you can find it in my TPT store.
Save These Pirate Activities for Kindergarten
If you’d like to come back to this post later, be sure to save the pin below! Just add it to your favorite board of kindergarten ideas so you can quickly find these activities when you’re working on your pirate lesson plans.
