The Treasure Hunt

8-10 yrs old

11-13 yrs old

Reading and Writing

Read and respond to the text, use the map from the book to find buried treasure in Minecraft.

Submitted By: Litcraft

September 26, 2019

Lesson Plan
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Skills

Collaboration
Communication
Creativity

External References

Treasure Island World File

Treasure Island world in Minecraft to support lessons.

Litcraft Website

LITCRAFT uses the popular Minecraft gaming platform to build accurate scale models of authorial maps from classic works of literature.

Java World

Treasure Island Minecraft world file for Java editions of Minecraft.

Supporting Files

The Treasure Hunt

Full lesson plan and additional activities.

Treasure Island Excerpts

Excerpts from Treasure Island to support activities.

Learning Objectives

To use the point, evidence, explanation (P.E.E.) prompt when answering questions about a text.
To predict what might happen from information stated and implied.

Guiding Ideas

This series of lessons is designed to help teach English Language Arts concepts through the study of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Reading aloud/shared reading of extended extract ‘The Treasure Hunt’

Children re-read the longer extract with their partner taking turns to read a paragraph and helping each other with any difficult vocabulary.

Put the students into groups and ask each group to focus on one of these questions:
- How does Long John Silver behave in this section of the text? What does his behavior reveal about him as a character?
- How is Jim feeling in this part of the story? How is this similar, or different, to the other characters in the text?
- How does the knowledge that they are getting near to the treasure alter the way that the pirates are acting in the text? Why have their actions changed?
- What has happened at this location in the book in the past? Why might it be significant to what is currently happening in the story?
- What are the different ways that the author builds tension in this section of the text?

Students are expected to respond using the point, evidence, explanation prompt.

Give them the text glued in the middle of a piece of sugar paper and two different coloured post-it notes. They use one colour for point and another for explanation. They highlight the evidence in the text.
As a group, children decide on their best P.E.E. and feed this back to the rest of the class.
Each group then writes a prediction, on a piece of card, about what they think happens next after the pirates discover that treasure has been stolen. Children must explain why (with evidence from the text) their prediction is plausible.
Teacher gets the prediction from each group and the class agrees a ranking system based on the most plausible to the least plausible prediction.
Students listen to the extract from Treasure Island which describes what happens after the pirates realise that the treasure has been stolen.
Return to the predictions that the children made. Were any of them correct? Has anything surprising happened? Could any of the information that was already there, in the section of the text they read the previously, have helped them to make a better prediction?

Additional supporting activities can be found in the attached PDF file.

Student Activities

Hunt for Treasure

Start by loading the Treasure Island Minecraft world file found in the resources section.

Book in chest 4 at start point: instructions

Search for Treasure.

Like the pirates you are now going to hunt for the treasure.

Using the map of Treasure Island from the book, find the three sites where X marks the spot (and other interesting sites). Bring back as much loot as you can.

You will receive a bonus 5 golden nuggets value for each of the following:

A suit of golden armour
An ornate timepiece
A carved crystal globe
A priceless painting
A golden statue
A cluster of opals

How would it feel to discover a treasure trove? What would you do with such a cache? Keep it hidden? Move it somewhere safe? Spend it?

Look for and read the books in the first (main) treasure site and inside the chest at Ben Gunn's cave.

Follow-up writing activity:

Children write a newspaper report based on Ben Gunn’s journal account of the theft of the treasure and the pirates’ reactions to discovering the treasure had been stolen.

*This writing activity should develop over a sequence of lessons and include engagement with examples of newspaper reports, sentence level development work and modelling of good practice.

Simpler follow up: Children read Ben Gunn’s journal account and write a summary of it.

Performance Expectations

Students are active participants in each activity.
Students are able to use the “Point, Evidence, Explanation” prompt when answering questions about a text.
Students are able to compare characters within a text.
Students are able to identify and properly use different types of language devices found in newspaper reports.