The Pirates Next Door

The Pirates Next Door by Jonny Duddle

Meet the Jolley-Rogers – a pirate family who has temporarily moved to Dull-on-Sea, a quiet seaside town, while they make repairs to their ship.

This peculiar family soon has the whole neighbourhood gossiping. Defying the grown-ups, Matilda becomes friends with young pirate Jim Lad.

When the Jolley-Rogers return to sea, the town realizes that they were wrong to assume the worst when it is discovered that the pirates have buried treasure in everyone’s yard. The neighbours are thrilled, but Matilda is sad to have lost her new friend, until she discovers her own treasure – a pen pal!

Main Focus: Who said it?

This Year 1 and Year 2 resource focuses on the first half of the book up until Mrs Bevan from eighty-seven marched down to the Town Hall.

Your class will read the sentences from The Pirates Next Door book and decide who said it.

This is a useful and quick activity to see who is listening carefully to the story and also introduces your class to direct speech and inverted commas.

We have included a multiple choice resource so your class can choose a character from the listed options.

Main Focus: Vocabulary Extension

This Ks1 resource helps your Year 1 / Year 2 class focus in on the vocabulary used within The Pirates Next Door story. There are many ‘pirate’ words to explore when the story is being read but this activity encourages your class to think of the meanings and identify words that mean the same.

Resource 1: Circle the correct synonyms (3/4 options) with close options.

Resource 2: Circle the correct synonyms (2 options).

Resource 3: Replace the words, sentences have been provided to show context.

Resource 4: Choose your own replacement word using a thesaurus. Sentences provided.

Resource 5: Create a list of two synonyms for each word provided. Once can be from knowledge and the other from thesaurus.

Main Focus: Phonics

This activity covers are range of different phonological spellings using two pages from The Pirates Next Door story.

The first page looks at final sounds: ing, ng, ay, nd, ly, ld, er, or & lf.

The second page looks at initial blends: sc, th, st, gr, bl, sh, wr & wh.

The third page looks at double vowels: ea, ou, ai, oe, ie, ee & oo.

The fourth page looks at split digraphs: a-e, o-e, i-e, & e-e.

Main Focus: Comprehension

This KS1 resource covers pages 17-21 for The Pirates Next Door to help your children with their comprehension and reading for meaning skills.

Your Year 1 / Year 2 children will read the questions are use the pages from the story to answer accurately.

This pack has be differentiated six ways to help target the range of abilities and stretch each Ks1 group.

Main Focus: Apostrophes for Possession

Your class will look at adding apostrophes to the sentences to show possession. We have kept it straight forward and close the the beginning of each sentence.

We have differentiated this activity for The Pirates Next Door five ways to cater for your KS1 class.

Main Focus: Poetry

This literacy pack is perfect for your KS1 class when looking at poetry.

Your Year 1 / Year 2 class will be given a poem to read about a useless pirate crew. You can read through the poem as a class or independently as there is repetitive language used.

Once you look at the features of the poem: repetitive language, rhyme patterns, rhyming words, sentence starters, pirate language and other aspects, your class can answer the questions to check their understanding.

Main Focus: Noun Phrases

This is a great resource to help your children include an adjective in their sentences to create a noun phrase.

Your class will look more closely at vocabulary used in the story and match up the nouns and adjectives to create sentences of their own.

Main Focus: Contractions

This activity uses the pages introducing the Jolley-Rogers and focuses on contractions used in the story.

Your Year 1 / Year 2 class must identify the words that are contractions and then identify what the original words are.

These guided reading resources are differentiated and sometimes choices are given to help children that require more guidance.

Main Focus: Character Descriptions

This is a lovely activity which allows your Ks1 children to draw some of the characters from The Pirates Next Door book.

Before your class draw the characters, they must read the brief character description and use the information to help them with the details.

This is a great guided reading activity to help your KS1 children slow down and take in as much information as they can and think creatively about how they can add in all the information.

Extra - Pirate Phrases

Get your KS1 class speaking like pirates and conversing with these pirate phrases.

Great for a display in a roleplay area to encourage using authentic language.

Picture Bank

This resource is a picture mat showing some things linked to pirates.

Here are a few ideas of how they can be used:

What do I know? Allow your children to write their prior knowledge of the pictures.

Allow your children to create a simple narrative using the pictures.

Give explanation for each picture, discussing its importance.

Little world. Allow your class to stick the pictures on lollipop sticks to carry out puppet role-play. They could also create the setting using the sand/water trays and other materials and props.

Pirate Art Ideas

Some fantastic art ideas to accompany your pirates topic.