The first huge professional development I led for my teachers in the my new gig as Curriculum Leader was starting a book club. My amazing admin invested in a book for every teacher and gave their full support by participating in the book study alongside the teachers. I chose "TEACH LIKE A PIRATE" by Dave Burgess for our first book because of ALL the amazing tweets and chats I had read on Twitter. My new school is full of amazing teachers who want to learn and grow so they were on board to learn how to teach like a pirate.
Walk the Plank was my favorite part of the book study. The small groups chose a time once a week to walk around the school for 5 minutes and discuss the reading for the week. I gave them suggested questions they could use if they ran out of things to talk about. Most groups walked longer than 5 minutes because they were so engrossed in their discussions. It was fun to see them walking and talking about how to teach like a pirate and bouncing ideas off each other.
The website I created had discussion questions for each chapter that teachers answered at their own pace. I encouraged them to go back and read comments made at the end. For my next book study, I want to do something different with this so that it is more of a back and forth conversation rather than just an answer to a question.
Burgess gives these hooks with questions to spark our creativity to "pimp" our lessons. I encouraged my teachers to just start with one, instead of waiting for that infamous flash of inspiration. Some started small with just a message on the board and others jumped in with full costume for an Ellis Island simulation!
My teachers were all in and the excitement in the building grew with every page we read! It was amazing to see the transformation of lessons and the experiences we were creating for our students. They were going home and talking about the mock trial and archeological dig instead of the "doing nothing" usually conveyed about what happened during their school day! Parents are commenting on our social media posts about how much they love hearing and seeing the lessons that are happening.
We are heading into the second semester with just as much enthusiasm as when we started and much of that is because we are trying to create experiences by teaching like a PIRATE!
Here are all the files!
Google Site
BIG Document of Resources
Walk the Plank Questions
Book Mark
Teach Like A Pirate Hook Cards

What you have done and created here is amazing. I am inspired to do this at my school next year and hope I get the support from my principal. Thank you for posting all of these amazing resources and basically a step-by-step "How to"!
ReplyDeleteAw! Thank you! So glad you found it helpful. Let me know if I can help in any way!
DeleteIs there a way to get a version of the bookmark that can be edited? I like it, but can't change the name of the school.
ReplyDeleteYou can get the powerpoint from the link below! Let me know if you need anything else!
Deletehttp://bit.ly/2M43bah