Adopt a Ship

One sheet, folded like a book. Cover: your name, "Day 4," the date. Then set up three pages inside:

From today until the Showcase, every class ends with your Captain's Log and your Course. That's how sailors did it. One page a day, every day, no matter what.

Right now, this minute, thousands of real ships are crossing the ocean. You can see every one of them. Pick yours.

1. Start in our harbor. Pan around Salem and Boston. Every arrow and dot is a real vessel.
2. Click ships until one feels right. That's your ship for the rest of the unit.
3. Write on your CAPTAIN'S LOG page: ship name · type · flag · where it's headed.

Ships in 1717 didn't sail wherever they wanted. Wind decided. Near the equator the trade winds blow west. Up north the westerlies blow east. Together they spin the Atlantic like a giant slow wheel called the gyre. Sailors rode it like a conveyor belt.

That wheel forced a route with three legs. On your TRIANGLE page, draw the Atlantic: Europe top right, Africa bottom right, the Americas on the left. Then draw and label the legs:

1. Leg 1: London south to West Africa. Cargo: trade goods and money.
2. Leg 2: West Africa west to the Caribbean. Cargo: enslaved people. The Whydah was built for this leg. She carried 367 human beings. She is named for the slave port of Ouidah.
3. Leg 3: The Caribbean north and east, home to Europe. Cargo: sugar, silver, profit.

Yesterday's callback: whose eyes is YOUR triangle map drawn from? The merchant counting profit sees one map. A person chained below deck sees another. Hold that thought for tomorrow.

Now zoom out. The whole world's shipping, live.

1. Where do ships bunch up today? Look at the Atlantic. Look at the narrow squeezes.
2. Put your paper triangle next to the screen. Is the ocean still a machine with set routes? What changed? What didn't?
3. Your adopted ship is part of this machine. Whose stuff is it carrying? Who gets paid?

Fast finishers: sketch "Routes of My Life" on scrap paper. Five places that made you, connected by lines. It becomes raw material for a story map project. Or earn game time: Whydah’s Voyage awaits.

Back cover, MY COURSE. Two short lists:

1. My top 3 people. Whose eyes might you tell this story through? (Browse the People tab if you're stuck.)
2. My top 3 ways to tell it. Map, comic, song, performance, newspaper, exhibit... (The full menu lives in Your Project HQ.)

Pitch Day is Thursday, July 30. Every day your lists get sharper. By next week: top 2. That's how a real project gets chosen: not one big decision, lots of small ones.