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ENGLISH / EXPLORE– LESSON 1FLAG

WHAT ARE WE LEARNING & WHY?

ALL students will be able to describe why sailors used sea shanties on board ships, and reproduce this in their own sea shanty.

MOST students will be able to infer how sailors might have felt aboard ships years ago, and give examples in their own sea shanty.

SOME students will be able to relate to the sailors of years ago, and produce a sea shanty exploring the life of these sailors.

AFL OPPORTUNITIES?

Knowledge assessed throughout through questioning and activities. Opportunity for students to share work at end of lesson.

STARTER (PREPARE FOR LEARNING) 10 MINS

Students to read the lyrics to the sea shanty, ‘Heave Away’. Teacher should nottell them it is a sea shanty. Around the lyrics, students to draw/write what issuggested to them by the words e.g. a ship, a pirate. If able to, play sea shantiesin the background (available on YouTube) as students work. Teacher to movearound the room using questioning, asking students to justify their images and ideas. Feedback as a whole class – what is suggested to us by the lyrics? (5 mins)

KEY

STAG

E 3

SHARE THE BIGGERPICTURE

MAIN ACTIVITY (ACTIVATION)10 MINS

Ask students about sea shanties to assess current knowledge – what are they?Why did sailors sing them? (5 mins.) Hand out ‘Sea Shanty’ information sheet.With highlighters, students need to work in pairs and highlight 5 facts about seashanties as fast as possible. When they have found and highlighted 5, they needto shout ‘SEA SHANTY’, and the teacher should check that they have highlightedFACTS. Prize optional if they have correctly identified 5. (5 mins.)

DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING – 35 MINS

Display image of old fashioned ship on board, and give each student a copy.Students to imagine that they are a sailor aboard the ship 200 years ago. Based on ability, they need to work through the following questions and answeron their sheet. ALL students should start with the lower ability questions, andwork their way up. Lower Ability - What would they be able to see/smell/touch/taste/hear? Middle Ability - What kind of work would they have to do? Higher Ability - If they were away from home, what would they be missing? (10 mins.)

Based on their ideas, students to write their own sea shanty. It must be at least 12 lines long, and can be split into stanzas if they wish. The lyrics of the sea shanty must be based on the ideas they have already come up in theprevious activity. (15 mins.)

Students to share their sea shanties with the class, reading/singing their lyrics.Include peer assessment by taking feedback from other students on what wasgood about the sea shanty, and what could be done to improve it. (10 mins.)

PLENARY – 5 MINS

Ask students to pack away. Before they leave, they must all tell you one thingthey have learnt about sea shanties during the lesson that they did not knowbefore. For higher ability students, extend their recall of knowledge throughquestioning e.g. Why did the sailors do that? What effect did the sea shantyhave on the sailors?

DIFFERENTIATION ACCESS/CHALLENGE

Pair work to help lower ability students gather information.Differentiated questioning throughout the lesson. Ship picture activitydifferentiated to help students develop their ideas based on ability.

HEAVE AWAY – NEWFOUNDLAND,ATTRIBUTED TO PIUS POWER SR.

Come get your duds in order

For we're going to leave tomorrow

Heave away, me jollies, heave away

Come get your duds in order

For we're going to cross the water

Heave away me jolly boys, we're all bound away

Sometimes we're bound for Liverpool

Sometimes we're bound for Spain

But now we're bound for St. John's town

To watch the girls a-dancing

Now it's farewell Maggie darling

For it's now I'm going to leave you

You promised me you'd marry me

But how you did deceive me

I wrote me love a letter

And I signed it with a ring

I wrote me love a letter

I was on the Jenny Lind

Sometimes we're bound for Liverpool

Sometimes we're bound for Spain

But now we're bound for St. John's town

To watch the girls a-dancing

SEA SHANTIES INFORMATION SHEET

Sea shanties were shipboard working songs. Shanties were sung from at least the fifteenth century through the days of steam ships in the first half of the 20th century. Most surviving shanties are from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries.

In the days when human muscles were the only power source available on ships, sea shanties served a practical purpose: the rhythm of the song helped to synchronize the movements of the ship workers as they worked at repetitivetasks. They also served a social purpose: singing, and listening to song, ispleasant; it stops boredom, and lightens the burden of hard work on longvoyages.

Most shanties are ‘call and response’ songs, with one voice (the shantyman)singing the line and the chorus of sailors bellowing the response.

CATEGORIES

Shanties may be divided into several rough categories:

SHORT DRAG SHANTY

LONG DRAGSHANTY

Short drag or short haul shanties were for tasks thatrequired quick pulls over a relatively short time, such as shortening or unfurling sails. When working in roughweather these songs kept the sailors in a rhythm that got the job done safely and efficiently.

Long drag or halyard shanties were for work that requiredmore setup time between pulls. It was used for heavylabour that went on for a long time, for example, raising or lowering a heavy sail. This type of shanty gave thesailors a rest in between the hauls, a chance to get abreath and a better grip, and coordinated their efforts to make the most of the group’s strength for the next pull.This type of shanty usually has a chorus at the end ofeach line.

Capstan (or windlass) shanties were used for long orrepetitive tasks that simply need a sustained rhythm.Raising or lowering the anchor by winding up the heavyanchor chain was their prime use. This winding was doneby walking round and round pushing at the capstan bars,a long and continuos effort. These are the mostdeveloped of the work shanties.

All wooden ships leak somewhat. There was a specialhold (cargo area) in the ships where the leaked-in water(the bilge) would collect: the bilge hold. The bilge waterhad to be pumped out frequently; on period ships this wasdone with a two-man pump. Many pumping shanties werealso used as capstan shanties, and vice versa,particularly after the adoption of the Downton pumpwhich used a capstan rather than pump handles movedup and down. Examples include: ‘Strike The Bell’,‘Shallow Brown’, ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor’, ‘Lowlands’.

In the evening, when the work was done, it was time torelax. Singing was a favored method of entertainment.These songs came from places visited, reminding thesailors of home or foreign lands. Naturally the sailorsloved to sing songs of love, adventure, pathos, famousmen, and battles. Of course after all the hard work justplain funny songs topped their list.

These were used only on ships with large crews. Many hands would take hold of a line ‘tug-of-war’ styleand march away along the deck singing and stamping out the rhythm. Alternatively, with a larger number of men,they would create a loop -- marching along with the line,letting go at the ‘end’ of the loop to take hold again foranother trip.

CAPSTANSHANTY

PUMPINGSHANTIES

FORECASTLESHANTIES

STAMP -‘N’- GO SHANTIES

These songs tend to have longer choruses similar tocapstan shanties. Examples: ‘Drunken Sailor’, ‘Roll theOld Chariot’. Stan Hugill, in his Shanties from the SevenSeas writes: “(Drunken Sailor) is a typical example of thestamp - ‘n’- go song or walkaway or runaway shanty, andwas the only type of work-song allowed in the King’sNavee at halyards; the crowd would seize the fall andstamp the sail up. Sometimes when hauling a heavy boatup the falls would be ‘married’ and both hauled on at thesame time as the hands stamped away singing thisrousing time.”

Life on a whaler was worse than on any other type ofvessel; your life might be shorter on a pirate’s ship, butthe work wouldn’t be so hard! Voyages typically lastedfrom two to three years, and sailor’s lives were filled withunrelenting, dangerous work and the ever-present stenchof whale oil. Whalers risked maiming and death whengiving chase in small boats that were often overturned oreven smashed by the whale’s tail in the fight! Songs helped give these men the will to go on in the faceof their ful circumstances.

WHALINGSHANTIES

The only rule almost always followed was that songs that spoke of returninghome were only sung on the homeward leg, and songs that sung of the joys ofvoyaging were only sung on the outward leg.

THE SHANTYMAN

The Shantyman was a sailor who led the others in singing. He was usually self-appointed. A sailor would not generally sing on as a shantyman per se, buttook on the role in addition to their other tasks on the ship. Nevertheless, sailorsreputed to be good shantymen were valuable and respected- it was a goodprofessional skill to have, along with strong arms and back.

Funny Fact: the theme song from the television show ‘SpongeBobSquarePants’has been taken from a sea shanty.

KEY

STAG

E 3 WHAT ARE WE LEARNING & WHY?

ALL students will be able to describe how a fisherman would feel when away from home.

MOST students will be able to infer how a fisherman and his family would feel when he is away from home.

SOME students will be able to show how a fisherman and other people would feel when he is away from home.

AFL OPPORTUNITIES?

Knowledge assessed throughout through questioning and activities. Opportunity for students to share work at end of lesson.

STARTER (PREPARE FOR LEARNING)10 MINS

Provide students with image of fishermen, and a blank head. Students have 5 minutes to select one of the men from the picture, and fill in the blank headwith what they imagine that man is thinking and feeling. Feed back and discuss,using questioning to draw out students’ justifications for their ideas.

FLAG

ENGLISH / EXPLORE– LESSON 2

SHARE THE BIGGERPICTURE

MAIN ACTIVITY (ACTIVATION)25 MINS

Provide students with information sheet about trawlermen and their wives – read through with students, and clarify any questions the students may have. Spider diagram on board some descriptive words that show how the fishermenmight feel when they are away, and how their families might feel also. (10 mins.)Students go back to the original image, and select one of the men to focus on forthe rest of the lesson. Students need to imagine that fisherman’s familyincluding wife and children, and make a family tree, creating names, dates ofbirth, relations for the fisherman. (15 mins.)

DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING – 15 MINS

Using their ideas, students need to imagine how the fisherman would feel whilstaway fishing, and having left his family behind. Using their ideas, students needto write a diary entry as if they are the fisherman aboard the ship, in the middle of a fishing voyage. They should try to write an extended piece of writing, usinglots of description and the ideas they have come up with. If they struggle with adiary entry, students could write a letter home to a member of their family. If students complete the task in the time given, they could write the ‘opposite’diary entry or letter, from a member of the fisherman’s family’s perspectivee.g. a letter from the wife to the fisherman.

PLENARY – 10 MINS

Students to swap their work with a partner. Mark using two stars and a wish,thinking about whether the diary entry/letter is realistic and gives a good idea of how the fisherman and his family would be feeling whilst he is away.

DIFFERENTIATION ACCESS / CHALLENGE

Optional tasks for the students to select based on their confidence and ability.Extension task for higher ability students.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE TRAWLERMAN AT HOME?

Trawlermen had a very macho image, which is not suprising, considering the hard job they had to do. But despite this, the trawlermen were quite ‘dandy’. This means that they were very elegant and refined dressers. One tradition of the trawlermen was to visit their tailor when they returned from a fishing trip, to be measured for something stylish. This was often trousers with highwaistbands, wide bottoms and moon pockets, with matching jackets - all in a range of colours, from sky blue to shocking pink!

THREE DAY MILLIONAIRES

Trawlermen were called the “three day millionaires”. This was because they were only home for about three days at a time, before they went off on anotherfishing trip. If they had a good trip and caught lots of fish they would get their“settlings” and could walk home feeling like a millionaire! The trawlermen hadonly three days to enjoy themselves and so they often treated their families tomeals out, bought new things and went out to enjoy themselves at the localpub. Life at sea was extremely hard and dangerous, so trawlermen enjoyed lifeto the full.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE A TRAWLERMAN'S WIFE?

The wives of the trawlermen received a small regular wage while theirhusbands were away. This was so that they could buy all the food and clothesand household items and didn't have to wait until their husbands got back froma fishing trip. If the wives didn't work, this would have been their only income.The day that all the wives went to the Dock Offices to collect this wage wascalled “white stocking day”. This saying dates back to when Whaler's wivesused to do exactly the same when their husbands were away. It is called “white stocking” day because in Victorian times, the wives would have all worn white stockings.

It must have been hard for the trawlermen's wives while the men were away atsea, but they got by and all helped each other. In fact the ladies became known

for their strength of character and their ability to get by in hard times. Every three weeks, when the men got back from sea the wives all used to say thatthey became “Princesses”. The trawlermen were only back for three days, before they had to go again, so they made the most of their time at home by treatingtheir families.

KEY

STAG

E 3 WHAT ARE WE LEARNING & WHY?

ALL students will be able to list some features of a leaflet.

MOST students will be able to identify some features of a leaflet.

SOME students will be able to use some features of a leaflet effectively.

AFL OPPORTUNITIES?

Knowledge assessed throughout through questioning and activities. Opportunity for students to share work at end of lesson.

STARTER (PREPARE FOR LEARNING)10 MINS

Provide students with tourist leaflet – they need to list 10 things they find in theleaflet that persuades people to visit. Feedback and create spider diagram onboard. (5 mins.)

Discuss with students why leaflets are used, and are useful? What do they do?Add to spider diagram on board. (5 mins.)

ENGLISH / EXPLORE– LESSON 3FLAG

SHARE THE BIGGERPICTURE

MAIN ACTIVITY (ACTIVATION)15 MINS

In pairs, students to think about the area in which they live – why might touristswant to visit, and what would they do/where would they go if they do visit?Feedback and share ideas. (10 mins.)

Re-confirm with students what needs to be included in a tourism leaflet, and how it should look. (5 mins.)

DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING – 30 MINS

In pairs, students to create a leaflet for the area in which they love, advertising all that is available for people to do if they visit. The leaflet should be colourful,informative, interesting and not just pictures! (20 mins.)

Once leaflets are complete, students should carousel around the room, lookingat everybody else’s work, and thinking carefully about whose provides goodinformation about the area.

Students to place Post-It on the leaflet they feel is most effective. Present prize to winning team if possible. (10 mins.)

PLENARY – 5 MINS

Before students leave, ask each one to tell you something they should include in a leaflet to persuade people to visit somewhere.

DIFFERENTIATION ACCESS/CHALLENGE

Students work in pairs, so sharing ideas between abilities. Assessmentopportunities for students to show knowledge.