If I were to walk into a classroom and see many different types of artifacts related to pirates it would definitely pique my curiosity.  I’m sure this was a terrific lead into the KWL chart.  The students should have been able to figure out what they would like to know about pirates based on the articles laid out before them.

I love the idea of having the notebook where each student can keep their own dictionary of pirate words and be able to reference back to what they are wanting to learn.  This would probably make it easier to check off things as you learn more information about a topic.  What If I Met a Pirate? makes answers to some of their questions readily available.