The Center offers curriculum guides and lesson plans to help educators utilize the history and science behind the shipwreck Whydah’s discovery in their classrooms. The Center’s education materials have been designed specifically with Massachusetts standards in mind.
While the Center’s curriculum guides and lesson plans work best in conjunction with a visit to the Whydah Pirate Museum, a field trip is by no means required. The content and lesson activities will function effectively independent of a visit. Teachers and students who do participate in a class trip, though, will find these lessons greatly enhanced by hands-on encounters with centuries-old artifacts, maps and artwork, and conservation tools and equipment.
The Center’s curriculum has been organized into two categories: History and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). For educators interested in history and social studies, please visit our history curriculum page. For educators interested in science, oceanography, archaeology, and underwater technology, please visit our STEM curriculum page.
The Center has also crafted a multidisciplinary Unit Plan that uses the true story of the Whydah to teach upper-elementary school students skills and standards in history, science, and language arts. While each lesson plan can function independently, as a multi-lesson exercise the entire unit illustrates how multiple academic disciplines can work together. Please contact meredith@shipwreckcenter.org to receive a digital copy of this Unit Plan and corresponding lesson materials.
The Center’s History Curriculum and Educators Guide helps schools and teachers use museum resources to enhance their lesson plans and engage their students. The Educator’s Guide holds lesson descriptions and was designed specifically to fit the current Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework.
This unit plan has been designed by the Center in association with the Whydah Pirate Museum, to use the true story of The Whydah Gally to teach upper-elementary school students skills and standards in history, science, and language arts. While each lesson plan can function independently, as a multi-lesson exercise the entire unit illustrates how multiple academic disciplines can work together.
During these lessons, students explore local history and bits of related folklore through a reading comprehension and oral narration exercise. Straightforward physics and chemistry experiments demonstrate how a scientific understanding of natural processes helps uncover and conserve the past. Activities in geography, demographics, and economics illustrate the larger forces that impacted and influenced the central characters of the Whydah‘s chronicle.
The creators of these lessons hope that the use of the Whydah‘s history and artifacts will remind students that these exercises—both ours and theirs—are not fruitless or trivial endeavors, but honest efforts to reveal, understand and sustain the legacy of ordinary people, who lived extraordinary lives.
Pricing and Invoicing
Groups are strongly encouraged to have payments made prior to arrival. We are happy to send an invoice with final headcounts and values a week prior to field trips.
In preparation for the trip, we highly suggest having our educators come to your school for a pre-lesson, this is a slide presentation about Black Sam Bellamy and the Whydah so that students have a deeper understanding of the history of the Golden Age of Piracy and would get a richer experience at the museum. There would be a small fee of $75 added for the lesson, ($125 if needed to be presented multiple times in one day) but we find that students are so much more prepared!
Our prices includes: the exhibit hall, conservation lab, and lesson which are reflective of grade
- 1st-6th graders $7 per student, $10 chaperone
- 7th-high school $9 per student, $10 chaperone
Camps, scouting groups, church groups follow grade pricing.
We prefer a 15:1 ratio, student to adult, and there is no charge for teachers or bus drivers.
