Educate your elementary students about the importance of a pirate captain's log. Pirate captains maintained written logs, similar to journals, about their travels and experiences. They wrote about the places they've been to and where they are going. Use this concept to inspire a journal-writing exercise. During the course of your pirate theme, have your students keep a captain's log where they write journal entries about their days, the things they accomplished and what they are looking forward to. Journaling is an effective way to give elementary students practice developing their writing skills while keeping the lesson interesting. Kids can even give themselves titles, such as "Captain Jill of the Highest Hill."
Pirates in fiction and movies are notorious for following treasure maps and hunting down gold. Use this as an idea to host a scavenger hunt for elementary students that is based on an academic lesson. For instance, you might be teaching your class about nature as part of their science curriculum. As such, you can host a nature-specific scavenger hunt, but with a pirate theme. Put students into large teams and give each team a scroll that contains the list of scavenger hunt items. Remember, the items on the list must be relative to your lesson, so a nature-specific list might have things like one small rock, two leaves, one flower, five red pebbles and three twigs of different sizes. Pass out pirate hats and eyepatches for the kids to wear during their hunt to conform to the pirate theme.
Vocabulary lessons are an integral part of elementary school curriculum. It is important for students to build on their vocabulary to enhance reading comprehension and writing skills. Use your pirate theme to inspire vocabulary projects for students. Play bits of a pirate movie and tell students to write down unusual words that the pirates say during the film, such as "savvy" and "ahoy." Then, the students will be brought to the computer lab where they will look up the meaning of those words. You can follow up this in-class lesson with word puzzles of pirate vocabulary words, such as a pirate word scramble or a pirate word search.
You can give elementary students a history lesson about pirates. The lesson should cover information about what the pirates wore, what they stood for and what they were good at. Read books and watch films that give students insight into the history of the pirates, and hold discussion question sessions with students, with questions such as "What would it be like if nobody stopped the pirates from stealing" and "Why do you think the pirate flag has a skull on it?" Such questions are prompts to get students to think critically about a time in history.