# PBL Unit Planner — Navigating Piracy
**Program:** LEAP4Ed Expanding Horizons, Middle School Summer 2026
**Site:** Collins Middle School, Salem MA
**Cohort:** Pirates (PBL, morning)
**Facilitator:** Facilitator (GIS / cartography)
**Format:** 20 sessions across five weeks · Mon–Thu · 2 sections × ~20 students · 90 min per section
**All unit materials are live and permanently linked at → https://whydahstory.com**
> **How to read this planner.** The calendar below is the unit as designed and taught:
> twenty lessons in order, grouped by week and theme. Specific dates are deliberately
> omitted, because they belong to one particular summer rather than to the unit. Every
> lesson has a live student page, linked in-line, so this can be run straight from the web.
> **Appendix B records what changed from the original plan and why** — that is the part
> worth reading before you teach it.
---
## Project Overview
| | |
| :-- | :-- |
| **Project Title** | **Navigating Piracy: The World of the Whydah** — a five-week, project-based, primary-source unit on maps, the Atlantic world, and the people who chose piracy in 1717. Built on the *Whydah Gally*: a slave ship turned pirate ship, wrecked off Cape Cod on April 26, 1717, and rediscovered in 1984. |
| **Unit Driving Question** | **Why would a person choose piracy in 1717 — and how would they want you to tell their story?**
Posted on the classroom wall on Day 1 and left there all five weeks. Every student can state it in their own words by the end of Week 1. |
| **Key Student Questions** | **KSQ 1 (Week 1 — Maps & Power):** How do people use maps and navigation to exercise power, in 1717 and today?
**KSQ 2 (Week 2 — The Triangle Trade):** What do Atlantic trade routes tell us about who benefits and who suffers, then and now?
**KSQ 3 (Week 3–4 — Geography & Choice):** How does geography shape the choices people can make — from 1717 piracy to modern chokepoints like Suez, Malacca, and Panama?
**KSQ 4 (Week 4–5 — Whose Stories):** Whose stories get mapped, and whose get buried? |
| **Final Product / Project** | Each student chooses **one person** from the historical record and **one format** from a 12-option menu, and tells that person's story the way *they* would have wanted it told. The project must cite **3–4 Voyage Journal entries** as its evidence base. Presented publicly at the **Showcase** on the final day.
**Student choice is the design of the project, not a garnish:** 15+ historical perspectives × 12 formats (story map, slides, live performance, illustrated poster, character flip book, letter sequence, museum exhibit board, graphic novel spread, 1717 newspaper front page, narrated Google Earth tour, ballad or sea shanty, **or pitch your own**). Format 12 — "pitch your own" — was used.
Menu + commitment form → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/choose-your-project.html |
| **Primary Standards Addressed** | **MA HSS Practice Standards 1–7** (2018 Framework) — inquiry, sourcing, point of view, credibility, evidence-based argument, informed action.
**Literacy in History/Social Science, grades 6–8** (2017 Framework) — RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.6, RH.6-8.7, RH.6-8.8; WHST.6-8.1, WHST.6-8.2, WHST.6-8.7, WHST.6-8.8, WHST.6-8.9.
**Grade 8 ELA** — RI.8.1, RI.8.6, RI.8.9; W.8.3, W.8.7; **SL.8.4** (the Showcase).
Content connects to the Grade 5 U.S. History course and high-school U.S. History I. Full alignment table with unit evidence → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/curriculum-guide.html |
| **Focus Outcomes Incorporated** | **ELA skills (reading, writing, speaking):** daily written Journal entries, five weekly extended writes, primary-source close reads (depositions, Roberts' Articles, Mather, Equiano excerpt), and a spoken Showcase presentation.
**Engagement in Learning:** students adopt a real ship on MarineTraffic and keep its Captain's Log for the whole unit; a running cipher league; a wax-seal signing ceremony; three field trips.
**Critical Thinking:** every source is sorted by a confidence tier — 🟢 Solid / 🟡 Contested / 🔴 Mythologized — and students are asked to defend the sort. Push/pull causal analysis, the Day 15 evidence-scored courtroom, and "what does your map leave out?" run all five weeks.
**Communication Skills:** structured peer review protocol, one-minute pitches, corners/step-in debates, closing circles, and the public Showcase.
**Peer Relations:** fixed "first mate" pairs, crews of 3–4 for the Articles, cross-format peer review partners assigned deliberately across friend groups, and a whole-class circle that opens or closes most sessions. |
| **Connections to Experts / Experiences** | **Real Pirates Salem Museum** (285 Derby St) — the actual recovered *Whydah* artifacts; curator-led where staffing allowed. Partnership carried the unit.
**Salem Maritime National Historic Site** — NPS rangers, the *Friendship* replica, Derby Wharf, the Custom House.
**Kayak outfitter (FT2)** — professional water-safety instruction and the on-the-water "life at sea" day.
**Boston Harbor Islands / Georges Island (FT3)** — the harbor gateway to the city where the story ended.
**Showcase audience** — families, LEAP staff, museum staff, and the public. |
| **Plans for Project** | The project is built **incrementally from Day 4**, not assigned at the end. The back cover of every daily sheet is a tracker page ("MY COURSE") that narrows weekly: six candidate people → three → two → one, and a parallel narrowing of formats. Day 15 (The Trial) re-frames the project as an *appeal* of the historical record; Day 16 (Pitch Day) ends with a signed commitment form naming the person, format, evidence, and supply list. Day 17 (Synthesis Studio) re-walks the whole unit in the chosen person's voice. Days 18–19 are build and peer-review days. Day 20 is the Showcase. |
| **Student Voice and Choice** | Perspective (15+ options) · format (12 options plus "pitch your own") · physical **or** digital Voyage Journal · which crew member to build a push/pull T-chart for · which articles the crew writes and which to strike · which four artifacts matter to their person · which voice to write the Georges Island log in. On Day 9 the class *votes* its own Articles into force and signs them in wax — the rules of the room become student-authored. |
| **Critical thinking, dialogue, and reflection routines** | **Daily.** (1) *Rig your sheet* — every session opens by folding and labeling a Journal sheet, so students know the day's thinking structure before content starts. (2) *LOG IT* prompts punctuate each mission — short, specific, written. (3) *Captain's Log* — a closing written reflection in the voice of the student's adopted ship's captain, dated like a sailor. (4) *Chart Your Course* — a 3-minute tracker entry that forces a small project decision every single day. (5) *Circles* — standing whole-class rings to open or close (check-in circle, muster circle, talking-piece circle, closing circle).
**Purpose:** the daily log builds the writing habit and the evidence bank; the tracker makes the final project a series of small owned decisions instead of one panicked choice; the circles build the classroom community that makes the harder content (the Middle Passage, the hangings) safe to discuss. |
| **Career connections** | The unit is taught by a working **GIS professional**, and the through-line is explicit: the 1717→1984 story *is* GIS. Southack's hand-drawn chart mark is georeferencing; Clifford's grid excavation is spatial data collection; the dig-square exercise is attribute logging. Careers surfaced by name and by task: **cartographer / GIS analyst**, **maritime archaeologist**, **museum curator and collections keeper** (met at Real Pirates), **National Park Service ranger and interpreter** (met at Salem Maritime), **historian and archivist**, **commercial mariner and harbor pilot** (tracked live all unit on MarineTraffic), **outdoor educator / guide** (met at the kayak outfitter). |
| **ML / EL strategies (consistent, weekly)** | 1. **Visual-first entry** — maps, artifacts, and images carry the content before text does.
2. **Pre-screened, excerpted primary sources** — never handed over raw; always paired with context.
3. **Explicit vocabulary** — 3–4 terms named and defined in plain language at the bottom of every day's page, with a searchable glossary on the dashboard.
4. **Sentence frames and structured talk** — pair "first mate" work before whole-class share; scripted peer-review stems ("I noticed… / I wonder… / What if…").
5. **Expression without an English-essay bottleneck** — the 12-format menu lets a student show deep understanding through a map, a performance, art, or a song. |
---
## Daily Project Planning Calendar
Links go to the live student page for that day. Every day also has a projector deck and a timed
teacher run-sheet; those files are listed by name in **Appendix C — Materials manifest**, and are
pending upload (see *Materials still to be linked*, below).
### Week 1 — Maps and Power
**Focus / KSQ 1:** How do people use maps and navigation to exercise power, in 1717 and today?
| **Day 1** | **Day 2** | **Day 3** |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **Launching the Voyage**
**Activities:** Silent Do-Now on a projected hook artifact (the ship's bell, John King's shoe, or the 1719 map) — 3 noticings, 2 questions. Driving Question posted on the wall to live there all unit. 90-second *Whydah* spark, no spoilers. Quick-write: "If you had to leave everything behind and start over at sea, what would your world have to look like?" Pair-share. Hand-draw the routes you travel on an ordinary day. Whole-class circle.
*No-materials intro day — folders begin Day 2.*
**Reflection Q:** What questions do you already have about the world of the Whydah?
**Academic Vocab:** driving question · perspective · voyage · primary source | **What Is a Map?**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-2-what-is-a-map/
**Activities:** *The Size Lie* — students drag countries across a live projection tool to catch Mercator distorting area; why sailors accepted the trade-off (rhumb lines) and why phones still use Web Mercator. *Chart Detective 1717* — investigate Cyprian Southack's real chart of Cape Cod: the sounding numbers, the rhumb lines, and Southack's own handwritten note about our ship. Three-column analysis: WHAT IT SHOWS · WHAT IT LEAVES OUT · WHO IT'S FOR.
**Reflection Q:** What would a map of your life include that a stranger's map of you would leave out?
**Academic Vocab:** cartography · projection · legend · rhumb line · scale | **Reading the 1719 World Map**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-3-reading-the-1719-map/
**Activities:** Close-read Herman Moll's *New & Correct Map of the Whole World* (1719). Detective hunt: California drawn as an island, the repeated "PARTS UNKNOWN," the unfinished Australian coast, the North Pole inset. Who Moll was — London's premier cartographer, drinking with pirates and privateers and selling their route data. *The Argument in the Picture:* read the title cartouche as a claim about who runs the world. Analysis card: THE MAPMAKER · WHAT IT SHOWS / COULDN'T SHOW · WHOSE EYES · THE ARGUMENT.
**Reflection Q:** If the 1719 map is an argument, what argument is it making — and who is making it?
**Academic Vocab:** cartographer · empire · intelligence · argument |
**Weekly extended writing prompt:** Describe a place you know well. List three things a map of that place would leave out. Why?
**Additional notes:** Google My Maps was dropped from the whole unit here — the Chromebooks have **no student Google logins**. Every mapping task was re-built to run on paper or on our own login-free **Map Studio** (https://whydahstory.com/map-studio.html). This is the single most important adaptation in the unit for anyone re-running it. Projection demo tool: https://maxwellhowegis.com/truescale/ · Southack 1717 chart: https://whydahstory.com/pics/southack-1717-chart-clean.jpg · Moll 1719 map: https://whydahstory.com/pics/moll-1719-world-map.jpg
---
### Week 2 — The Triangle Trade
**Focus / KSQ 2:** What do Atlantic trade routes tell us about who benefits and who suffers, then and now?
| **Day 4** | **Day 5** | **Day 6 — FIELD TRIP 1** | **Day 7 — FIELD TRIP 2** |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **Adopt a Ship**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-4-adopt-a-ship/
**Activities:** Absorbed the missed Day 4 plus a tightened Atlantic-World lesson. Each student adopts a **real ship on MarineTraffic** and opens a Captain's Log they keep for the rest of the unit. Ship Bingo. Then *Draw the Triangle* on paper: trade winds and the gyre force the route's shape; label all three legs **by cargo** — Leg 2's cargo was people. The *Whydah* was built for Leg 2, carried 367 human beings, and is named for the slave port of Ouidah.
**Reflection Q:** Who benefits when a ship like the Whydah crosses the ocean — then? Now?
**Academic Vocab:** triangle trade · gyre · trade winds · empire | **Out of the Machine**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-5-out-of-the-machine/
**Activities:** Opens with a standing check-in circle. *The Crossing* — a 20-minute quiet block, no points, no racing: the three numbers from the ship's 1716 voyage (367 forced aboard at Ouidah · 312 alive at Jamaica · 55 died at sea), copied into the Journal, with a student-chosen mark of respect drawn on Leg 2 of their triangle. Then *The Flip* — February 1717, Bellamy's crew takes her and the same planks carry a free crew; about one sailor in four aboard was a Black man. *The Deal* — two columns, sailor's deal vs. pirate's deal — then a corners walk and a People-tab hunt. Closes on a talking-piece circle.
**Reflection Q:** What would freedom have meant to someone who joined this ship?
**Academic Vocab:** Middle Passage · articles · share · testimony | **Real Pirates Salem + Salem Maritime NHS**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-6-real-pirates-salem-maritime/
**Activities:** All-day walking trip, two sites on one waterfront, sections swapping over lunch so every student gets both. **Real Pirates Salem** — the actual recovered artifacts: the bell that proved the wreck's identity, the pieces of eight, and the John King case (his shoe, silk stocking, and leg bone) with a required silent minute in front of it. Structured artifact hunt, one object per KSQ. **Salem Maritime NHS** — board the *Friendship* (1797 replica), walk Derby Wharf and the Custom House with NPS rangers.
*No screens, no Chromebooks — paper trip sheet and pencil only.*
**Reflection Q:** What did you see today that a book couldn't have shown you?
**Academic Vocab:** artifact · replica · wharf · curator · provenance | **Life at Sea: Kayak Day**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-7-life-at-sea/
**Activities:** On-the-water day with a professional outfitter (vests, safety brief, LEAP transport). ~10-minute **land brief before vests**: four doors open to a 1717 sailor — merchant ship (worst runs ≈1 in 5 of the crew died), Royal Navy (wages frozen since 1653, press gangs), fishing boat, pirate crew (you vote; shares are written; the law hangs you). Three doors push, one pulls — the engine of the whole driving question. On the water: **dead reckoning** with no instruments — pick a landmark, estimate speed, direction, time. Writing happens after, on dry land.
**Reflection Q:** After a day on the water, what would make someone risk a pirate crew for this life?
**Academic Vocab:** dead reckoning · current · crew · share |
**Weekly extended writing prompt:** Imagine you're a 1717 sailor choosing between a merchant ship, the Royal Navy, or a pirate crew. After today on the water, what would you pick, and why?
**Additional notes:** MarineTraffic live map (the whole-unit "adopted ship" spine) → https://www.marinetraffic.com/ · The Middle Passage block is deliberately de-gamified: no league points are awarded during *The Crossing*. Teaching frameworks used for that content: Facing History & Ourselves, Learning for Justice ("Teaching Hard History"), and the Smithsonian NMAAHC teacher resources. Equiano is used as a Middle Passage voice but is **not** Whydah-era — the pages say so explicitly, and so should any future facilitator.
---
### Week 3 — Life as a Pirate
**Focus / KSQ 3:** How does geography shape the choices people can make?
| **Day 8** | **Day 9** | **Day 10 and Day 12** | **Day 11 — FIELD TRIP 3** |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **The Vote**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-8-the-vote/
**Activities:** A live class vote first, bodies across the room, then the debrief: in summer 1716 Bellamy's crew voted Benjamin Hornigold out for refusing to attack English ships, and elected Bellamy. A farmhand could not fire a lord; a Navy sailor could not fire an admiral; a pirate crew could fire its captain. Students then **pick one of eight real crew members** — Bellamy, Paulsgrave Williams, John Julian, John King, and the hanged six — and build a **push/pull T-chart** from the evidence, minimum three on each side. About a quarter of this crew were Black men, many of whom had freed themselves from the trade the ship was built for.
**Reflection Q:** Which crew member's story surprised you the most — and why?
**Academic Vocab:** push factor · pull factor · recruit · vote | **Sign the Articles**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-9-sign-the-articles/
**Activities:** The *Whydah*'s own Articles are lost — survivors swore at the Boston trial that they existed and were signed, but the paper went down with the ship. Students read the closest surviving analogue, **Bartholomew Roberts' eleven articles (c. 1721)**, and answer three questions with rule numbers: which rule surprises you, which protects the weakest person aboard, which one would you strike. Rule Hunt for points. Then crews of 3–4 **write their own Articles**, the whole class votes them into force, every student signs the master copy, and it is sealed with **real red wax** and hung on the wall until the Showcase. Muster circle to close.
**Reflection Q:** Would you sign on to a set of articles like these? What would worry you?
**Academic Vocab:** articles · covenant · vote · shares | **The Wreck** → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-10-the-wreck/
**Lost and Found** → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-12-lost-and-found/
**Activities (Day 10):** *Draw the storm before you see any evidence* — 12:15 AM, April 26, 1717, a nor'easter driving the ship onto a lee shore, 146 people aboard — then test the drawing against the record. Bellamy was sailing four ships that night with four different endings. She struck a bar ~500 ft off the beach; 2 of 146 reached the sand alive: Thomas Davis and John Julian, 16. Written **land acknowledgment** for Punonakanit Wampanoag territory, whose voice is absent from the 1717 record. Wreck mapped at **41.891°N, 69.957°W**.
**Activities (Day 12):** *One Map, 267 Years* — Southack's salvage mission failed, but the mark he made on his chart found the ship in 1984. Students then run a **6×6 grid archaeology dig** (A1–F6), logging every find by its square, and learn provenance: *where* a thing was found is what makes it evidence instead of loot.
**Reflection Qs:** If the Whydah had not wrecked, would we know any of these people's names? · Why does evidence matter for the story you tell?
**Academic Vocab:** wreck · survivor · evidence · land acknowledgment · salvage · grid · archaeology | **Georges Island / Boston Harbor**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-11-georges-island/
**Activities:** Ferry out into Boston Harbor — the gateway every ship had to pass, and the city where the story ended for the men who lived. The captured crew were tried in Boston; six were hanged at the Charlestown Ferry in November 1717. On the water: spot **Nix's Mate**, where the pirate William Fly was gibbeted in 1726 — nine years later, a different chapter, and the pages say so plainly, because keeping the two true stories separate *is* the history skill. Fort Warren read as a later layer (begun 1833). Harbor sketch-map on site. The Captain's Log breaks its own rule today: written **in a chosen historical voice**, not the adopted ship's captain — the first live rehearsal of the final project.
**Reflection Q:** Standing at the harbor gateway, how does where a story ends change the way you'd tell it?
**Academic Vocab:** gateway · channel · gibbet · legend |
**Weekly extended writing prompt:** Pick one person who died in the wreck or stood trial. Write a paragraph about who you imagine they were.
**Additional notes:** **Day 12 (Lost and Found) was taught inside Week 3, doubled up with Day 10.** The Georges Island ferry booking fixed the field trip to the Thursday of this week, and the schedule bent around it. If your calendar allows, run Day 10 and Day 12 as separate sessions; they are strong enough to stand alone. Depositions and the shares-math extension are in the handouts packet → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html#deposition and https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html#shares-math
---
### Week 4 — Modern Oceans, and the Record
**Focus / KSQ 3 → KSQ 4:** Whose stories get mapped, and whose get buried — across time?
| **Day 13** | **Day 14** | **Day 15** | **Day 16** |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **Where Ships Squeeze Through**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-13-where-ships-squeeze-through/
**Activities:** Zoom out and the ocean looks free; it is not. Using our own **Chokepoints map**, students hunt four doors — **Suez** (~12% of world trade), **Malacca** (about a third of global shipping), **Bab-el-Mandeb / Red Sea** (attacks since 2023 pushing crews the long way around Africa), and **Panama** (the 2023–24 drought that cut daily transits by about a third). For each: what makes the squeeze — land on both sides, a canal, a strait? Then students **hand-rule a navigator's plotting sheet** — grid and compass rose — exactly as a 1717 navigator ruled up a fresh page. Frame: piracy clusters where three factors line up — a waterway, unpoliced water, and coastal economic deprivation. 1717 and today are the same machine, not a coincidence.
**Reflection Q:** What does where someone chooses to sail tell you about what they're running from — or toward?
**Academic Vocab:** chokepoint · sea lane · dead reckoning · hotspot | **Salem Then and Now**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-14-salem-then-and-now/
**Activities:** Derby Wharf (built 1762, nearly half a mile) beside the same water today on the live traffic map — what would a sailor from the age of sail still recognize, and what would stop them cold? Then the harder page of the local ledger, taught factually and without hand-wringing: Salem got rich on the water, cod and lumber out to Caribbean plantations worked by enslaved people, sugar and molasses and rum back — and after the Revolution some Salem merchants sent slave ships of their own. Named ships, named owners, surviving record. **Trace one item:** each student picks something from their own backpack, finds where it was made, sketches a rough world map from memory, and plots the route and probable ship type.
**Reflection Q:** What's still happening today that started in 1717?
**Academic Vocab:** wharf · container · import · global trade | **The Trial**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-15-the-trial/
**Activities:** The room becomes the Boston Admiralty court of October 1717 and the students are the commissioners. The record is real: *The Trials of Eight Persons*, printed Boston, 1718. **Scored evidence raid (9 min):** bring back three pieces of evidence *with the page each came from* — 1 point per sourced fact, 2 if it comes from a sworn deposition or a real artifact, 3 for evidence nobody else brings back, **minus 1 for anything you cannot show on a page.** In this court, made up is perjury. **Verdict round:** four real men — Thomas Davis, Thomas South, Peter Cornelius Hoof, and Simon van der Vorst — each heard and voted on: GUILTY or FORCED MAN, vote with your feet, defend if called, then the facilitator reads what the court actually did in 1717. Almost every man at the bar said *I was forced*; the court believed two. The day closes on **the ninth man**: John Julian, the Miskito pilot, got no verdict to vote on — no trial, no recorded defense. He was sold. *Eight men got a trial. One man got a receipt.* That is the hinge into the final project, which is framed from here on as **the appeal**.
**Reflection Q:** The court of 1717 gave my person ___. My appeal gives them ___.
**Academic Vocab:** deposition · testimony · verdict · forced man · perjury | **Pitch Day**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-16-pitch-day/
**Activities:** Yesterday the record decided how a person is remembered; today the student takes the record's job, and the project becomes *the appeal*. Last pass through the People and format menus. Write **the pitch** — WHO · HOW · WHAT FROM · WHY ME — then a 4–6 sentence paragraph naming all four, with the rule that you must be able to physically touch the Journal page behind every source you claim. **Sharpening round:** pitch aloud for one minute, partner asks one question that finds the soft spot, revise. Day ends with a **signed commitment form** in the facilitator's hand: person, format, evidence, supply list. Students rule the form up by hand — there is no classroom printer. That sheet is the contract for the build days and the shopping list; supplies are bought from it once.
**Reflection Q:** Why did you choose the perspective you chose?
**Academic Vocab:** pitch · perspective · format · source |
**Weekly extended writing prompt:** What is one reason to leave and one reason to join that you think mattered most for the Whydah's crew? Support with evidence.
**Additional notes:** Week 4 was re-mapped mid-unit after Day 12 moved into Week 3. The planned "Trial Run Day" became **Day 15: The Trial**, a full lesson built on the 1718 printed trial record — the strongest evidence-and-sourcing day in the unit, and the one to keep if this is ever re-run. The project decision was staged deliberately across the week: Mon pick two formats → Tue cut to one → Wed the courtroom re-frames the project as an appeal → Thu sign the commitment form. **Day numbering shifted here** — from Day 15 onward, what students see is one higher than the underlying page filename (see the page map at the end of this document). Chokepoints map → https://whydahstory.com/map-studio.html
---
### Week 5 — Synthesis, Build and Showcase
**Focus / KSQ 4:** Whose stories did we hear, and whose stayed buried?
| **Day 17** | **Day 18** | **Day 19** | **Day 20** |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **Synthesis Studio**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-17-synthesis-studio/
**Activities:** One last voyage through the whole story, sailed as the chosen person. Students walk in *as* their person (ten seconds, eyes closed — what would they notice about this room, and what would they beg us to get right?). Then **The Hunt: Four That Matter** — choose four artifacts or moments from the Artifacts tab, the Timeline, the People tab, and **their own five-week folder**, which today gets renamed *your archive*. One sentence of why for each, in the person's voice. At least one pick must come from the student's own work — their work is part of the record now. Whole-group synthesis circle on KSQ 4. The Captain's Log closes: find the adopted ship one last time and write its farewell. The tracker becomes tomorrow's build plan.
**Reflection Q:** Looking back as your chosen person — what did you notice this time that you missed the first time?
**Academic Vocab:** synthesis · perspective · archive · buried story | **Build Day 1**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-18-build-day-1/
**Activities:** Launch circle — one sentence each, a promise to the crew: "Today I build ___." Then straight to work, with a written milestone at the top of the build sheet. *Finish ugly today; polish tomorrow. Start with the hardest piece, not the prettiest.* Mid-session mini-workshop, **"Give them a voice"**: every invented line must stand on a documented fact — write the fact, note its source, then write the line. Worked example: the record says John King, aged eight to eleven, demanded to join the pirates off the *Bonetta* on 9 November 1716 and his mother could not stop him. "My mother held my arm. I chose the pirates anyway" stands on that. "I always dreamed of being famous" floats — cut it or find a fact it can stand on. Drop-in help stations: tech, writing, performance. Milestone board.
**Reflection Q:** What's the hardest part of telling this story?
**Academic Vocab:** draft · evidence · voice | **Build Day 2 — Peer Review & Polish**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-19-build-day-2/
**Activities:** Structured peer review in deliberately mismatched pairs — your partner is not your best friend, and builds in a different format, because fresh eyes catch what yours skip. Six steps: SHOW (two minutes, then quiet) · "I noticed…" (one exact thing that works) · "I wonder…" (one question a visitor might ask) · "What if…" (one change) · WRITE + THANKS (the maker records the partner's words *verbatim* and signs it) · SWAP. Reviewer's code: one question, one suggestion, not five — choosing is the skill. Makers do not defend; they write it down and rule on it in the next block. Then **fix their thing first**, revise, rehearse, and set up the Showcase space together.
**Reflection Q:** What did your partner see in your work that you couldn't see yourself?
**Academic Vocab:** peer review · revision · protocol · run of show | **THE SHOWCASE**
→ https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-20-the-showcase/
**Activities:** No missions, no races, no points. *You are not a student today. You are the museum.* **Set-up (15 min)** — projects to stations facing the room, name cards (your name, your person, your format), Voyage Journals open on the display table. **Showcase (50 min)** — doors open to families, LEAP staff, museum guests, and the public. Guests get a story, not a speech: your person and why you chose them, what you made and how, and one surprise. Then questions. *"I don't know" is a real answer — historians say it all the time. Say what you know, say what nobody knows, and say the difference.* **Closing circle (25 min)** — Journals in hand, one last log entry in the captain's voice: where does your ship sail from here?
**Reflection Q:** What did you choose to include in your project — and what did you choose to leave out?
**Academic Vocab:** showcase · audience · reflection |
**Additional notes:** No grades — there never were. The Showcase *is* the product. A/V is needed for the performance and narrated-tour formats; room layout, family invites, and the closing-circle script are on the prep checklist.
---
## Assessment
No grades, by program design. Evidence of thinking, in three layers:
1. **The Voyage Journal** — a folder with one deliverable per session (maps, analysis cards, T-charts, the storm drawing, the signed Articles with its wax seal, the dig log, the pitch). By Week 5 it holds 16+ dated entries and is renamed *the archive*. It is both the running record and the evidence bank for the final project.
2. **The final project** — one person, one format, citing **3–4 named Journal entries**. A single one-page rubric works across all twelve formats → https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html
3. **The public Showcase** — presentation to a real outside audience, with Journals displayed gallery-walk style.
---
## Resource Index — everything, permanently linked
Shared so this unit can be re-run by someone else. The whole site is public; no login is
required for any student-facing page.
### Core planning documents
| Resource | Link |
| :-- | :-- |
| **Unit dashboard** (the working hub — story, people, maps, wreck, artifacts, sources) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/ |
| **Full curriculum guide** (print-ready: every session, standards alignment, UDL & access) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/curriculum-guide.html |
| **Unit at a glance** (one page, print-ready — for meetings) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/unit-at-a-glance.html |
| **Printable student handouts packet** | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html |
| — Read a Deposition Like a Historian | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html#deposition |
| — Divide the Prize: pirate shares math | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/handouts.html#shares-math |
| **Project HQ** — the 12-format menu + commitment form | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/choose-your-project.html |
| **Public landing page** | https://whydahstory.com |
### Daily student pages
| Day (as students see it) | Lesson | Link |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Day 2 | What Is a Map? | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-2-what-is-a-map/ |
| Day 3 | Reading the 1719 World Map | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-3-reading-the-1719-map/ |
| Day 4 | Adopt a Ship | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-4-adopt-a-ship/ |
| Day 5 | Out of the Machine | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-5-out-of-the-machine/ |
| Day 6 | Field Trip 1 — Real Pirates + Salem Maritime | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-6-real-pirates-salem-maritime/ |
| Day 7 | Field Trip 2 — Life at Sea: Kayak Day | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-7-life-at-sea/ |
| Day 8 | The Vote | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-8-the-vote/ |
| Day 9 | Sign the Articles | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-9-sign-the-articles/ |
| Day 10 | The Wreck | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-10-the-wreck/ |
| Day 11 | Field Trip 3 — Georges Island | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-11-georges-island/ |
| Day 12 | Lost and Found | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-12-lost-and-found/ |
| Day 13 | Where Ships Squeeze Through | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-13-where-ships-squeeze-through/ |
| Day 14 | Salem Then and Now | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-14-salem-then-and-now/ |
| Day 15 | The Trial | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-15-the-trial/ |
| Day 16 | Pitch Day | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-16-pitch-day/ |
| Day 17 | Synthesis Studio | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-17-synthesis-studio/ |
| Day 18 | Build Day 1 | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-18-build-day-1/ |
| Day 19 | Build Day 2 — Peer Review | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-19-build-day-2/ |
| Day 20 | The Showcase | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/day-20-the-showcase/ |
### Interactive tools built for this unit
| Tool | What it does | Link |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| **Map Studio** | Login-free story-map and chokepoints tool — the replacement for Google My Maps | https://whydahstory.com/map-studio.html |
| **TrueScale** | Drag-a-country projection distortion demo (Day 2) | https://maxwellhowegis.com/truescale/ |
| **Flythrough** | Google-Earth-style tour of the Whydah's route | https://whydahstory.com/flythrough.html |
| **Games hub** | Student game hub (teacher-gated) | https://whydahstory.com/games/ |
| — *Whydah's Voyage* | Replay the coast — the voyage as a game | https://whydahstory.com/navigator/ |
### Dashboard reference tabs (used daily in lessons)
| Tab | Link |
| :-- | :-- |
| Overview / driving question | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#overview |
| People (the crew, the hanged six, the survivors) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#people |
| Timeline | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#timeline |
| Artifacts | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#artifacts |
| Maps & geography | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#maps-geo |
| Why piracy? (push/pull) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#why-piracy |
| The wreck & the fleet | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#wreck-fleet |
| The Salem connection | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#salem |
| Final project | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#final-project |
| Glossary (searchable) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#glossary |
| Confidence & methods (🟢/🟡/🔴 source tiers) | https://whydahstory.com/curriculum/as-taught/#confidence |
### Primary sources and external references
- Southack's 1717 chart of Cape Cod (clean scan) — https://whydahstory.com/pics/southack-1717-chart-clean.jpg
- Southack chart, library mega-scan — https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/book_viewer/commonwealth:kk91fq614
- Herman Moll, *A New & Correct Map of the Whole World*, 1719 — https://whydahstory.com/pics/moll-1719-world-map.jpg
- MarineTraffic live vessel tracking (the adopted-ship spine) — https://www.marinetraffic.com/
- Native Land Digital (used for the Day 10 land acknowledgment) — https://native-land.ca/
- Maps of Salem, Salem Historical Society — https://www.salemhistorical.org/maps-of-salem
- MA DESE frameworks — https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/current.html
**Research base:** Marcus Rediker · Colin Woodard · Kenneth Kinkor's *Whydah Sourcebook* · the
Expedition Whydah archive · *The Trials of Eight Persons* (Boston, 1718) · the 1717 Boston
Vice-Admiralty Court records · Cotton Mather, *Instructions to the Living* · Elizabeth Donnan's
documents on the Salem trade. Every factual claim on the dashboard is tiered
🟢 Solid / 🟡 Contested / 🔴 Mythologized, with the methodology published on the site.
---
## The handover packet
Everything listed below is **included in the handover packet** as files. Nothing is hosted
online, and nothing needs to be uploaded.
The complete teaching handbook — every run-sheet, all circle activities, assessment criteria,
materials and supply lists, the family letter, the substitute plan and the field-trip
briefings — is supplied as a single PDF. The twenty slide decks are supplied as PowerPoint
files alongside it.
> **One item is deliberately kept off the website.** The cipher league runs live across all
> five weeks, and its answer key is supplied as a separate file. If those answers are posted
> anywhere students can search, the league stops working.
*Not included by design:* the student photo galleries and the teacher-only Captain's Cabin
(passcode-gated) are excluded from this shared planner — the first for student-privacy reasons,
the second because it contains classroom-management controls rather than curriculum.
---
## Appendix A — Page number map (important for re-use)
On July 29 the unit was renumbered: an inserted studio day became Day 15 for students, so every
day after it shifted up one. **Filenames were deliberately left unchanged.** Anyone re-running
this unit needs this table.
| Students see | Lesson | File |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Day 15 | The Trial | `day14b.html` |
| Day 16 | Pitch Day | `day15.html` |
| Day 17 | Synthesis Studio | `day16.html` |
| Day 18 | Build Day 1 | `day17.html` |
| Day 19 | Build Day 2 | `day18.html` |
| Day 20 | The Showcase | `day19.html` |
The date-driven banner in `day-config.js` is the source of truth for what students see; it flips
itself at midnight Eastern.
## Appendix B — What changed from the original plan, and why
Kept here because the changes are the useful part for a future facilitator.
| Change | Why |
| :-- | :-- |
| **Google My Maps cut from the whole unit** | Chromebooks have no student Google logins. All mapping moved to paper and to the purpose-built, login-free Map Studio. |
| **Thu Jul 9 missed** | Session lost; its essentials (adopt-a-ship, Captain's Log launch) folded into Mon Jul 13, and the navigation-tools content moved to the kayak-day brief and Day 13. |
| **Second museum trip dropped** | Replaced with the in-class **Synthesis Studio** (Day 17), which turned out stronger: students re-walk the unit through their chosen person's eyes using their own archive. |
| **Mock trial role-play cut, then reborn as Day 15** | The original mock trial was cut in early July; in Week 4 it came back, rebuilt around the actual printed 1718 trial record with scored, sourced evidence. It became the best sourcing lesson in the unit. |
| **Day 12 pulled forward into Week 3** | Week-3 scheduling crunch ahead of the Georges Island trip. |
| **Circles added to every day** | Added July 20 after the Middle Passage day showed how much the harder content needed a container. |
## Appendix C — Materials manifest
Every session's projector deck and teacher run-sheet, by filename. These are inventoried and
verified present; **they are not yet uploaded**. When they are, replace each filename with its link
and this planner is complete.
> **Read the three columns carefully — the numbers do not line up, on purpose.** From Day 15 on,
> what students see, what the web page is called, and what the deck is called were renumbered at
> different times. The deck filenames match the **student** numbering; the page filenames were
> deliberately frozen (see Appendix A). A file called `Day-17-Synthesis-Studio.pptx` is the deck for
> student **Day 17**, and its student page is `day16.html`. This is correct, not a typo.
| Students see | Lesson | Student page | Projector deck | Teacher run-sheet |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Day 1 | Launching the Voyage | *(no page — predates the day-page pattern)* | `Day-1-Welcome-Aboard.pptx` | `DAY-1-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 2 | What Is a Map? | `day2.html` | `Day-2-What-Is-A-Map.pptx` | `DAY-2-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 3 | Reading the 1719 World Map | `day3.html` | `Day-3-Reading-The-1719-Map.pptx` | `DAY-3-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 4 | Adopt a Ship | `day4.html` | `Day-4-Adopt-A-Ship.pptx` | `DAY-4-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 5 | Out of the Machine | `day5.html` | `Day-5-Out-Of-The-Machine.pptx` | `DAY-5-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 6 | FT1 — Real Pirates + Salem Maritime | `day6.html` | `Day-6-FT1-Real-Pirates-Salem-Maritime.pptx` | `DAY-6-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 7 | FT2 — Life at Sea: Kayak Day | `day7.html` | `Day-7-Life-At-Sea.pptx` | `DAY-7-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 8 | The Vote | `day8.html` | `Day-8-The-Vote.pptx` | `DAY-8-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 9 | Sign the Articles | `day9.html` | `Day-9-Sign-The-Articles.pptx` | `DAY-9-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 10 | The Wreck | `day10.html` | `Day-10-The-Wreck.pptx` | `DAY-10-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 11 | FT3 — Georges Island | `day11.html` | `Day-11-Georges-Island.pptx` | `DAY-11-Presentation-Script.docx` · `Georges-Island-Pretrip-Briefing.docx` |
| Day 12 | Lost and Found | `day12.html` | `Day-12-Lost-And-Found.pptx` | `DAY-12-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 13 | Where Ships Squeeze Through | `day13.html` | `Day-13-Where-Ships-Squeeze-Through.pptx` | `DAY-13-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 14 | Salem Then and Now | `day14.html` | `Day-14-Salem-Then-And-Now.pptx` | `DAY-14-Presentation-Script.docx` |
| Day 15 | The Trial | `day14b.html` | `Day-15-Project-Studio.pptx` | `DAY-15-Project-Studio-Script.docx` · `DAY-15-Mock-Trial-Cards-And-Judge-Script.docx` |
| Day 16 | Pitch Day | `day15.html` | `Day-16-Pitch-Day.pptx` | `DAY-16-Pitch-Day-Script.docx` |
| Day 17 | Synthesis Studio | `day16.html` | `Day-17-Synthesis-Studio.pptx` | `DAY-17-Synthesis-Script.docx` |
| Day 18 | Build Day 1 | `day17.html` | `Day-18-Build-Day-1.pptx` | `DAY-18-Build-1-Script.docx` |
| Day 19 | Build Day 2 — Peer Review | `day18.html` | `Day-19-Build-Day-2.pptx` | `DAY-19-Build-2-Script.docx` |
| Day 20 | The Showcase | `day19.html` | `Day-20-The-Showcase.pptx` | `DAY-20-Showcase-Script.docx` |
**Whole-unit materials (not day-specific)**
| Material | File |
| :-- | :-- |
| Student print pack — the Voyage Journal sheets | `PRINT-JOB-Student-Pack.pdf` |
| Final-project rubric / assessment criteria | `Navigating Piracy — Assessment Tracker & Criteria.docx` |
| Full materials and supply list | `MATERIALS-LIST.docx` |
| Circle question banks (the daily circle routine) | `Circle-Time-Question-Bank-v2.docx` · `Circle-Questions-Simple.docx` |
| Per-day circle activities (Days 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 14B, 16) | `Day-N-Circle-Activities.docx` |
| Day 1 teleprompter notes | `Day-1-Teleprompter-Notes.pdf` |
| Substitute-runnable backup lessons (3) | `Lesson Plans/SWAP-01…03-*.md` |
**Decks are regenerable.** Each deck is built from a script in `Lessons/deck-assets/build-dayN.js`
using pptxgenjs (`node build-dayN.js`). Those build scripts use the **page** numbering, not the
student numbering — `build-day16.js` produces `Day-17-Synthesis-Studio.pptx`. Edit the build script,
not the `.pptx`, or the next rebuild silently reverts your change.