Adapted from an article in Times Educational Supplement                           13th May 2005

Geography

KS1. Plot Thomas Pitcher's voyage on a map, naming the continents he passed and the oceans he sailed across. Using travel brochures and the internet, develop an understanding of an 'island home' such as Madeira.

KS2. Follow Pitcher's voyage on a globe. Which of the following did he cross and how often: the Equator and the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn? Which continents and countries does the Equator pass through? Is there more land to the north or to the south of it? Which country is named after the Equator? Try the teaching ideas on www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/ontheline/, which explores the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian.

KS3-4. Teach pupils how to use latitude and longitude to locate places on the Earth's surface. Give pupils a route to plot, using latitude and longitude, on different types of projection e.g. Mercator and Peters. Compare the appearance of the routes. Why is Mercator best for navigation?

Find out about these wind belts: the Doldrums, Trade Winds, Roaring Forties. Choose four or five places along Thomas Pitcher's route and find out what the weather is like today using the world forecast on www.bbc.co.uk/weather/. Explain the weather differences.

History

KS2. Ask pupils to write a log of one journey between home and school. By looking at a captain's log and other sources, ask them to write their own reconstruction of the captain's log about voyages that took place. These can be from any period between Ancient Egyptian times until the end of the Second World War.

KS3. Try to decipher Captain Cook's handwriting in the National Archives Learning Curve Exhibition on the British Empire www.learningcurve.gov.uk/empire/g1/cs4/default.htm.

KS4-5. What counts as evidence? To what extent were logs rational, value-free accounts of events? Did different captains apply different approaches to the way they recorded events?

Students might find the log valuable as a source of information about health and medicine. Captain Cook and other Royal Navy commanders were pioneers in sanitation and health.

English

KS1-2. Watch the movie Pirates of the Caribbean and discuss how it makes pirates seem dishonourable yet glamorous - and how it makes the navy look silly!

Read John Masefield's poem Sea Fever and ask pupils to decide which details the poet describes make them want to go sailing and which details put them off. Why did Masefield choose that title for the poem?

KS3-4. Consider Robert Browning's poem Meeting at Night and describe the night and the journey the lover must take to reach his lady. Write a few paragraphs about the poet's use of colour, sound and small detail, looking particularly at which lines rhyme with each other.

Chapter one of Treasure Island contains the description of the archetypal 'old sea dog'. Note which details have become synonymous with our own idea of a sailor.

KS5. REad The Tempest (I.i) and explain how the language, action and character interaction convey the severity of the storm and the ship's danger.

Science

KS1-2. Experiment with forms of writing to find which survives best underwater (pencil, crayon, ink).

SIMPLY THE BEST - THAT'S THE SEA CADETS !