It’s panto season!Oh no it’s not!Oh yes it is!

Captain Hook

Captain Hook’s ship is theJolly Roger

A famous fictional pirate was Captain Hook from J M Barrie’s play and book Peter Pan

This is what Hook looks like in the film of Peter Pan

J M Barrie wantedCaptain Hook to look like this

Blackbeard Anne Bonny

Pirates from long ago

Here are some things pirates

might have stolen to put in their treasure

chests

Have you heard of these real life pirates from the 1700s?

Blackbeard was the name of an English pirate. He was known to have attacked ships in the Caribbean and Atlantic coast of North America.

Anne was one oftwo famous female pirates. She fought in men's clothing, was an expert with pistol and cutlass and very dangerous.

He was the fictional pirate in a book called Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson

Long John Silver

Why do you think that pirates would need to know about maths?

Where is the treasure?Pirates would use maps to search for treasure and ships they might want to attack.

Can you direct the ship to the treasure island?

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A B C D E F G H I J

Look at these two pirate boats. How are they different?

Modern day pirate vessel Pirate ship several hundreds of years ago

Aargh me hearties!

What do you know about

pirates?

Pirates ahoy!

17 millionpound ransomfor oil tanker

Pirates capture oil tanker! In November 2008 pirates took control of a huge Saudi oil tanker off the coast of Kenya.

What does ransom mean?

Up2d8 mathsPirates ahoy!

Teacher NotesThe pantomime season and the recent news of present day piracy in the world’s seas and oceans both lend themselves well to pirates, an all time favourite topic, for many, in KS1! The spreads provide many possible mathematical ideas to develop with the children, that can be easily differentiated to suit both KS1 and KS2.

Slide 1: Captain Hook

Remind the children of the story of Peter Pan and give a brief review of Captain Hook: He was the pirate of the Jolly Roger galleon and lord of the pirate village/harbour in Neverland, where he is widely feared. He is the arch enemy of Peter Pan. It is said that Hook was Blackbeard’s 3rd or 4th mate, and that he was the only man Long John Silver ever feared.

Hook wears an iron hook in place of his hand which was cut off by Peter Pan and eaten by a crocodile. The crocodile liked the taste so much, he follows Hook around constantly, hoping for more. Luckily for Hook, the crocodile also swallowed a clock, so Hook can tell from the ticking when the Crocodile is near. Hook hates Peter so much that he lives for the day he can make Peter and all his Lost Boys walk the plank.

This slide about the infamous Captain Hook provides a starting point for many opportunities for mathematics for example:

- Make a list of pantomimes that the children have seen or heard of, take votes as to those they would most like to see and create pictograms and bar charts to show the results

- Find out the price of tickets to see a pantomime in your area and cost a trip for the class to go

- Imagine putting on a panto in school and together organise the show including cost of tickets,

how many to sell, total income from ticket sales, advertising, seating arrangements (numbers,

positions of seats etc.) refreshments for the interval (what, how much in quantity and price etc.). You could ask different groups to tackle different aspects

… continued on the next slide

Slide 1: Captain Hook continued…

- Make a tally of favourite Disney films and turn this into a pictogram and bar chart

- Describe the Lost Boys in terms of size. You could copy the picture below and ask the children to cut them up and order them, then investigate all possible ways to group them to make six e.g. 2 + 4, 2 + 2 + 2.

Make 10 copies of the crocodile to practice number pairs for ten

Create a board game with a picture of Neverland and the pictures below and ask the children to make up question cards on the particular area of maths you are focusing on

Lost Boys: Tootles (Skunk costume), Nibs (Bunny costume), Slightly (Fox costume), Curly (Bear costume), The Twins, also known as Marmaduke and Binky (Raccoon costumes).

Slide 2: Pirates from long ago

Briefly tell the children about the real life pirates Blackbeard and Anne Bonny and the fictional pirate Long John Silver. You could give them the opportunity to research them on the internet.

Here are some other ideas for using the spread:

Ask them to discuss the question about pirates and their need for maths. Encourage them to look at the picture clues for ideas. You could encourage them to talk about:- counting their treasure- sharing their treasure- fitting the treasure on board- measuring the amount of powder for the cannons and guns- estimating how much food to take on the trip- estimating how much water to take for drinking, washing etc. You could explore how much water a person/child uses in a day and would a pirate need more or less and why- reading a map- measuring the wind speed and direction- estimate how long the trip will take

Make up some problems that incorporate their ideas and the ones on the spread e.g. - Blackbeard had three bags of gold coins, in the first there were 100, in the second twice as many and the in the third twice as many as the second. How many did he have altogether?

-There are 20 cannons on the pirate ship, each one need 2.5kg of gun powder, how much gun powder will be needed? Each kilogram costs 12 doubloons, how much will the gun powder cost?

- Ask them to make up a menu of meal choices for the pirates and cost it

- Do some map reading using real maps, asking the children the directions and/or road to follow to get from one place to another.

- Use the coins and gems as a way into multiplication and division or simple sorting activities.

- You could make up battleship games with opposing pirate fleet shooting cannons at each other.

Slide 3: Where is the treasure?

This spread shows a treasure map and gives many opportunities for mathematics involving position and direction including coordinates for example:

- Use the coordinates on the map to locate various items e.g. the volcano, monkeys, sharks

- Ask the children to take you from one place to another using directional vocabulary including compass directions if appropriate

- Ask them to make up their own treasure map on squared paper and write grid numbers. They could give this to a friend to locate positions of different objects and to write or give instructions using positional language to get from one to another.

Slide 4: Pirates ahoy!

The problem of present day piracy has made recent news headlines following the highjack in November 2008 of the Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star, which was carrying two million barrels of oil valued at $100 million. It had a multi-national crew including two Britons. This news highlighted the fact that piracy in our seas still goes on today. The pirates in this case are from Somalia.

You may wish to use the map below, for general knowledge purposes, to show the children the world and discuss the countries they can see , talking about those they know or they might have visited and then show them where recent Somali attacks have taken place:

Click here to view the original map online.

Slide 4: Pirates ahoy! continued…

Here are some ideas to use with this spread:

- Give the children the opportunity to work in mixed ability groups to discuss the pirate’s question (what do they know about pirates). Highlight the fact that historical pirates stole treasure and goods. Today’s pirates wouldn’t actually take the oil but they would hold the boat to ransom for a lot of money.

- The actual ransom money is $25 million, £17 million is a rounded conversion. Use digit cards to make big numbers in this way, saying the numbers out loud: make twenty one, then four hundred and twenty one then 6421, then 36421 until they have made a millions number. Note that they don’t need any understanding of place value, all they do is listen to what you say and put the new number where you say it – not difficult. Discuss where they might see this amount e.g. sand on a beach, grains of sugar, blades of grass on the field. Link this to the ransom money as a huge amount.

- Focus on the size of the ship which is 330 metres long. Ask the children to measure the length of the classroom and then to compare with the ship. You could use a child one metre (approx) tall and describe the length of the ship as 330 of them laid on the floor. You could then ask them to work in small groups to draw a representation of the child 10cm long and then cut out 33 of these lengths and stick them together using sticky tape to represent the tanker and compare the two. Alternatively you could use a metre stick.

- Discuss the boats question. You could ask questions such as if there were 50 pirates in the old ship, how many new boats would be needed to carry them if they could only hold five people?

- Convert ransoms into different world currencies using current exchange rates from the internet. This is a good opportunity for calculator practice.