Who says Secondary Pupils aren't just big kids...

Over the next 2 days our school holds 'Activity days'. All the different teachers organise a series of 2 day events focussing on different skills and activities that pupils might not experience in an every day curriculum. Obviously this involves a lot of trips (which can be pretty pricey!) for the students so my friend, Esther and I organised a pirate day (well.... if you can't pirate on an activity day, when can you?). Instead of trips, we had a series of team events to build pupils skills and to have tons of fun!

DAY ONE
1) Build your ship (or make it using paper origami skills)
2) become initiated with your pirate name, booklet and lots of singing (how to say YAAAAARGH and YO HO A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME).
3) Signing the pirate contract for your boat
4) Designing your skull and cross bones and agreeing tactics
5) Shipwrecked and stranded we swim the obstacle course to treasure island (obviously this was great as we soaked the kids with super water pistols and hose pipes - just before the great course in the photo!)
6) Cutlass fighting
7) a bit more singing (yo ho a pirates life for me)
8) analysis of a pirate film

DAY TWO
1) film and edit a pirate something.... (used comic life, istop motion or imovie)
2) final count of pirate prizes
3) treasure hunt (solve the clues about the history of pirates, pirate language and pirate geography) for the box of treasure!

As you can see from the picture - all the students really enjoyed themselves and so did the teachers!! 

It reminds us how important enjoying learning and being able to relax and have fun with the students is. I think in the land of continuous target setting and constant focus on progress, the sheer enjoyment of learning can get a bit lost! We should take some tips from the primary schools and look at their fun ways of learning - our pirates are learning about crafts, history, human rights, team work, film editing, maths, building their literacy and getting great exercise over the next 2 days - and enjoying themselves as well - what could be better?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!