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Free creative teaching ideas for Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Creative Teaching Ideas for

TREASURE ISLAND

by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)



ON THIS PAGE: LitWits hands-on activity ideas and instructions, teaching topics, learning links, and more. Scroll on!

Printables for purchaseOR Video workshop

About the story

In the mid-eighteenth century, an old sea captain dies at the Admiral Benbow Inn in England. The innkeeper’s son, Jim Hawkins, discovers a treasure map among the man’s belongings, and shows the map to a trusted doctor and a squire. Together they procure the Hispanolia and set sail with an ominous crew, which they soon find out includes pirates! There’s enough mutiny, pirate talk, espionage, and swashbuckling to enthrall the most thrill-seeking reader.

This story will also inspire honesty and encourage bravery, for Treasure Island  is a tale of Jim’s quest for a treasure: not just a shiny metal, but his mettle.

Read reviews / buy the book here. (We make a small commission on anything you buy through our Amazon affiliate links.)

About the author

Teaching Options

This long webpage shares all the fun we had in our live workshops on Stuart Little. We hope it inspires you! If you'd like to teach this book yourself, you might want to buy the printables you'll see throughout. 

On the other hand, if you'd like US to teach your kids, check out our video workshop! 
Video workshop on TREASURE ISLAND

Hands-on Fun

Making a plan . . .

There are many ideas in this Hands-on Fun section—don't feel you have to do them all! Go with whatever works best for you and your kids. If you want to focus on a particular teaching point, our Takeaway Topics section can help you narrow down the activity options. And you can enhance discussions during any activity with audiovisual aids from Learning Links or story objects from Prop Ideas.

In our workshops, we do all the activities on this page, in order of the story's narrative arc. You might find our narrative arc worksheet helpful for sequencing your activities, teaching the important concept of the arc, and helping kids learn how Robert Louis Stevenson put Treasure Island   together.
Narrative arc worksheet & other printables
NC Wyeth - Blind Pew - Treasure Island reading activity - LitWits Workshops

An Art to Art Talk

A LitWits project from the story's Rising Action

One of our favorite things to do is transform an author's art into yet another kind of art. Robert Louis Stevenson's description of Blind Pew gives kids a fine example of descriptive writing—so vividly that it begs to be depicted. So, after talking about the art (and responsibility!) of illustration, that's what we did!

INSPIRATION

 . . . the day after the funeral, and about three o’clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure.  —Ch. 3

Have your students draw their own version of Blind Pew based on the author's description.  You may or may  not want to show them N.C. Wyeth's wonderful illustration first, but do show them after!  

We have a template for this activity in our Printables, if you'd like that.
Template & other printables

Colorful Cartography

A LitWits project from the story's Rising Action

When Jim, the squire, and Dr. Livesey discover the map of the island, every reader snaps to attention. Who doesn’t want to be in on that scene?  And knowing that Robert Louis Stevenson’s original map was beautifully colored, we looked over Jim’s shoulder and embellished the thrilling find.

For this project you can simply copy the map for the kids to color, or you can have them trace it first. (Following the contours of the island helps them visualize the ideas of cape and cove, which you can further define.) Even when tracing, most kids will find a way to “make it their own.”

Below is a little video we made later that teaches some key geography and cartography points on this map, then shows kids how to trace a "decoy map" to keep pirates from discovering the treasure.


To add to the adventurous mood and ramp up imaginations, we had a raucous sing-along of “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life for Me.”  You might want to play some sea shanties and listen to some pirate facts.

INSPIRATION

The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked “The Spy-glass.” There were several additions of a later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink—two on the north part of the island, one in the southwest—and beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the captain’s tottery characters, these words: “Bulk of treasure here.”  – Ch. 6

SUPPLIES



Template & other printables

BookBites:

Simple Pleasures

A LitWits activity from the Rising Action

BookBites is the part of our literary experience when we get to “taste the story.”  We choose a food right out of the book, and it has to meet at least one criterion:

  • it’s important to a plot point
  • it has thematic significance
  • it’s unfamiliar for reasons of culture, era, or location
 For our bites of this book, we crunched on apples and savored raisins. After all, if Jim hadn’t had a hankering for an apple, this story would have turned out quite differently! So apples represent a key plot point, and raisins the respect Jim earns from his companions for his “luck and courage.”  We also added Parmesan cheese as a tribute to Ben Gunn’s patience and fortitude.

INSPIRATION

I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone. – Ch. 10

And they made me sit down at table beside them, poured me out a glass of wine, filled my hands with raisins, and all three, one after the other, and each with a bow, drank my good health, and their service to me, for my luck and courage. – Ch. 12

“You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese—toasted, mostly—and woke up again, and here I were.” – Ch. 15

“. . . in my snuff-box I carry a piece of Parmesan cheese—a cheese made in Italy, very nutritious. Well, that’s for Ben Gunn!” – Ch. 19

For later workshops we sent supplies by mail, so we made a label for "quietly crunchy" dried, stepped-on, barrel-aged apples (the perfect eavesdropping snack), which is included in our printables.
PRINTABLES SET

Knotty Pirates

A LitWits activity from the story's Rising Action

You can’t sail off in search of treasure until you can tie a few nautical knots — or at least the bowline knot. Not only do you need it to sail, but to keep your competitors in line. Remember when Jim got “all tied up” in the hunt?

INSPIRATION

I had a line about my waist and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who held the loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his powerful teeth.   – Ch. 31

SUPPLIES

  • lengths of twine for practicing
  • glue
  • scissors
  • construction paper or cardstock (if you don’t want to have the kids mat the diagram, just print it directly on cardstock)
  • copies of the how-to diagram (in our printables)


This activity lets kids learn a skill that would have been essential to all of the characters throughout their journey.  We’re not sailors ourselves, so we showed a helpful the bowline-tying video below, and had the kids make souvenir bookmarks of a how-to diagram.
Diagram & other printables

Wherever You Go, There You Are

A LitWits activity from the story's Rising Action

The characters in this story would never make it in modern society — or would they?  They might fit in better than we do, depending on the circumstances!  So we prompted our kids to imagine them in certain situations.  Like this one:

Long John Silver, you’ve hopped to the convenience store to get a new package of tube socks (they last twice as long for you!) when you pass the machine that makes those puffy frozen drinks you love so much.  Not only are they delicious, but you really like the way they make your lips turn blue and a little bit scary. You’ve got a serious craving for a large one, NOW.  But uh oh, the machine is broken! What will you do?

It’s a LOT of fun to watch the kids enact each character’s response — and more fun if you coach them in pirate-talk first. You can distribute our cheat sheets, if you like; they're included in our printables.


This activity gets kids thinking about characterization, without actually thinking about characterization.  It also helps them practice discernment. After all, the good guys and bad guys are after the same treasure. What’s the difference between them? What behaviors and attitudes set them apart?  (If you're using props, hold up the black spot and empty bottle and ask what actions they symbolize, and if Dr. Livesey would do those things.  Hold up the rope and ask if he'd ever keelhaul a sailor.)

By pondering just what the pirate would do, they’ve grasping what the author has done:  made Long John Silver predictable by establishing who he is.
Prompts + pirate lingo & other printables

All For Nothing

A LitWits project from the Climax

When the pirates, passing signs of murder and mayhem, track down the site of the treasure, it’s already been found. There’s just an empty hole, like a mouth screaming “All for nothing!” It’s devastating to the pirates — everything they’ve been living (and killing) for is gone. The missing treasure represents ruined dreams.

INSPIRATION

Before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing-cases strewn around. [ . . . ] All was clear to probation. The cache had been found and rifled; the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone! – Ch. 32

Each of these six men was as though he had been struck. But with Silver the blow passed almost instantly. Every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a racer, on that money; well, he was brought up, in a single second, dead . . . – Ch. 33
Just before that disappointing discovery, Stevenson gives us a great chance to talk about the damage greed does, and the futility of seeking happiness in financial gain:

The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. Their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.  -Ch 32

We're just as excited about treasure as anyone would be, but this scene makes one message clear:  seeking treasure is an empty goal, not worth one's soul!  As the kids painted their own empty treasure chests, we talked about this idea and how the “empty chest” expresses it. 

Here are a few great points our kids came up with — your kids can add more:

  • if you spend your life chasing wealth and don’t find it, your life feels empty and meaningless
  • even if you do find it, riches don’t fill a void in a person’s heart
  • people who care all about money lead hollow lives
  • greed robs a person of character
  • when you see money as your greatest treasure, real treasures can be invisible to you

When the treasure is found elsewhere, the narrator observes what damage has been done by greed--not the treasure itself: 

How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.   -Ch 33

We asked the kids what intangible treasures Jim gained through his adventures, then had them write a sentence on parchment describing a real  treasure of their own (meaning an abstract treasure that no one could take from them) and place it in their treasure chest.  We suggested they bury it at home, and make a map — they loved that idea. You can buy parchment or have the kids make it.

(Another option is to cut circles from gold-glitter paper and have kids write loved ones' names on the back of each one, so they're labeling each fake coin with a true treasure. Then have them deliver the paper coins later, as precious "gold spots" instead of the dreaded "black spots." Who doesn't love hearing "you're a treasure to me"?)

The point having been made, we shared some delightfully ghastly details about real pirates, and an exciting story of real pirate treasure actually found.
PRINTABLES SET

Worksheets


Throughout our workshops, we weave in worksheets that help kids process ideas in written form. For Treasure Island,  the kids used our three worksheets to:

  • follow the narrative arc
  • write some impressively dastardly, diabolical dialogue
  • learn some story vocabulary to describe a villain
These worksheets and all our activity printables are included in our printables set—click the red button for previews and details.  Whenever we add new worksheets and printable to this set, they'll automatically show up in your account.
3 worksheets & other printables

Printables previews

The worksheets and printables used for our activities are sold as a complete set.

Common Core State Standards Alignment for the comprehensive use of our teaching ideas and materials is also included for grades 3, 4, 5 and 6. 
DETAILSOR get our video workshop instead!

(If you buy the video workshop, the necessary printables are included.)

The LitWits Kit

Pack up for the field trip!

Or in this case, the voyage! A LitWits Kit is a bag or box of supplies and printables you pack up and give to each child right before you begin your experience of the story.  You might be doing one-off projects as you read through the book together, or you might do everything in this guide from top to bottom after the book has been read. However you explore this book in LitWitty ways, kids love the anticipation of opening their kit.

If you'd like to build LitWits Kits for your kids, you could easily arrange the items in a bag, basket, or story-relevant container.  Honestly, it's just as much fun to create a kit as it is to open one!

To make it all the more fun, our printables for many books include special "story packaging" for certain activity supplies, including BookBites. Click the button below for a specific list of contents for this book. 
PRINTABLES SET

Takeaway Topics

Why we chose this book for a "field trip"
We definitely dressed up for this one as kids--there's something about pirates' lingo and attire that overrides the fact that they're wicked criminals--at least those in literature! Robert Louis Stevenson clearly knew that, and let his bad guys be as terribly fascinating as we want them to be.  As adults, we knew they'd provide lots of fun ways to bring this story to life! So we chose it for one of our experiential workshops. And it's packed with great takeaway topics, which we're sharing below.

In our workshops, we did our best to make these teaching points tangible, meaningful, and memorable in the kids' hands. It's amazing how much kids can learn while they're "just" having fun!

Happy teaching,
Becky and Jenny
Want US to take your kids there?

Takeaway 1

Good Guys and Bad Guys

With two parties equally determined to get at stolen goods, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad.  After all, both groups have a common goal, strong leaders, a sense of duty, and sets of rules. The treasure had never belonged to our heroes--so why they should get the gold? Is it just because the story is told from Jim’s point of view? “I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn…”  Is Jim a reliable narrator?  Why or why not?

Hands-on connections in this guide:  piracy props (pirate flag, empty bottle, rope, black spot, pen and inkstand); “Wherever You Go, There You Are” activity, creative writing ("Dastardly Dialogue") worksheet; vocabulary ("Words for Rascals") worksheet; audiovisual aids

Takeaway 2

Real Value

Most of the characters in Treasure Island risk their lives for a pile of gold.  Ask your kids about their own treasures – what would they grab if they had to leave home quickly, without time to pack? Why is it important to them? Where would they hide it?

Discuss sentimental, financial, relational and other kinds of value, and encourage discussions about their respective merits. Jim gains far more important treasures by the end of the book--like maturity, courage, compassion, and some law-abiding friends.

Hands-on connections in this guide:  “Colorful Cartography” project, “All for Nothing” project, treasure props (treasure chest and coins, key)

Takeaway 3

The Pirate Life

Pirates in books come off as made-up characters, like trolls or giants. But one-legged pirates in bandanas were once real and common, and so were government-authorized pirates, called privateers, like Sir Frances Drake (pictured below). Privateers were supposed to harass ships of enemy nations, but they often plundered and murdered as well. Female pirates existed too, like Madame Cheng, Mary Read, and Anne Bonny.

It sounds exciting, in an awful way, from a distance, but the day-to-day life of pirates was filled with discomfort and boredom. They lived with rats and disease, and without nutritious food or medical attention. They lived on salted pork and bug-infested biscuits, sometimes resorting to gnawing on old leather and sipping broth made from boiled bones. They rarely had fresh water, which is one big reason they drank so much alcohol.  If they lost an eye or a leg, they just had to sweat it out until the wound closed.

On the other hand, there was a pirate code of honor that meant they might be treated more respectfully than they had been on a merchant or military ship. Disagreements were settled by vote, and they were paid more for higher-risk work and lost limbs. Disloyalty and thievery (from each other) were harshly punished. For some sailors, piracy meant better treatment, despite its risks.

Piracy still exists, of course. You might ask the kids how today’s pirates, their goals, and their methods, be different from those of Treasure Island – or are they the same?

Hands-on connections in this guide:  “All for Nothing” project, piracy lifestyle props (empty bottle, black spot, rope, Jolly Roger), “Wherever You Go, There You Are” activity, “Knotty Pirates” activity, creative writing and vocabulary worksheets; audiovisual aids
Treasure Island is chock-full of wonderful topics to explore, from Atlantic Ocean geography to British history and navigation. Scroll down to see our curated Learning Links for more tangential teaching opportunities, and to see how we brought this book and its ideas to life. 

Learning Links

Explore these links to supplement your reading experience, research points of interest, and prompt tangential learning opportunities.

About the Book & Author

Story Supplements

Setting

Map of the Devon county of England — where, as Stevenson indicates in his letters, the opening of the book is set
Map of Bristol
The history of pirates in Bristol
Bristol's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade
Sound recording of ocean waves gently hitting the beach
Sound recording of a rainforest morning chorus!

Ships & Sailing

Image of the reproduction of Hispaniola used in the 2003 movie version
The official website of the British-based Coracle Society
Interesting article about coracle fishing in Wales
Image of 16 important nautical knots
Diagram detailing the parts of a pirate ship
Image of a ship medicine chest, c. 1836
Image of antique, pine dovetail sea chest, c. early 1800s
Short video demonstrating how to tie 8 of the most common nautical knots
Fun, animated version of Grog’s Index of Boating Knots

Pirates

Historical information about actual pirate codes of conduct during the Elizabethan era!
"Pirates and Buried Treasure" - a history
Image of a pirate flag!
1684 book about pirates – by a pirate!
Beautiful, color picture of a real parrot
Kid-friendly pirate crafts!
Neat sound recording of a pirate ship creaking along at sea!
Sing along video of Disney’s “A Pirate’s Life for Me (Yo Ho),” complete with lyrics

PRINTABLES SET

Prop Ideas

When choosing props for our live workshops, we always try to focus on two important categories: props that are unique to the setting, because they help kids understand “what that was like,” and props that are symbolic of themes, because they make big ideas visual and tangible. Both kinds of props generate those wide-eyed, “aha!” moments.

Below is an overview of the display we put together for our live workshop, and under that we've given more details. You could easily have your kids contribute items to a table over time, as the book is being read. 

Sometimes we create a printable prop; click the button to see what we've made for this book.
PRINTABLES SET


Rope, sand, & shells

I had a line about my waist and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who held the loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his powerful teeth. For all the world, I was led like a dancing bear.  -Ch 31

An old key & sealed parchment

“Give me the key” said my mother; and though the lock was very stiff she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling. [The bundle in the chest] contained two things—a book and a sealed paper.”   -Ch 4
Key, parchment, sealing wax

Treasure

It was a strange collection [ . . . ] English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider’s web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck—nearly every variety of money in the world . . . -Ch 34
treasure chest, pirate coins,  costume jewelry, buttons

Spyglass

All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope . . .  - Ch1
spyglass

Quill & inkstand

I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.  --Ch 1
quill pen or feather, old bottle

The black spot

On the floor close to his hand there was a little round of paper, blackened on the one side. I could not doubt that this was the black spot . . .  -Ch 4
Black marker on brown paper, crumpled and cut

Tar & salt

I seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new.   --Ch 7
Roadside tar and sea salt crystals

Empty bottle

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"   -Ch 1 

Jolly Roger

The Hispaniola still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger—the black flag of piracy—flying from her peak.   -- Ch 19
pirate flag, pine tree branches, and seashells

LitWitty Shareables





Original Ilustrations

by N.C. Wyeth

N.C. Wyeth's beautiful illustrations for Treasure Island, now in the public domain. (Sketching from one of these makes a great activity for early finishers!)

Great Quotes

Between Silver and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable—not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit. I declare we could fight a frigate. Ch. 7
*
“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.” Ch. 9
*
It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiostiy, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone. – Ch. 10
*
Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to saving our lives. – Ch. 13
*
“Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese — toasted, mostly.” – Ch. 15
*
“I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-mile. You won’t fight, as gentlemen o’ fortune should; then, by thunder, you’ll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He’s more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: let me see him that’ll lay a hand on him–that’s what I say, and you may lay to it.” – Ch. 28
*
“And now, Jim, we’re to go in for this here treasure-hunting, with sealed orders too, and I don’t like it; and you and me must stick close, back to back like, and we’ll save our necks in spite o’ fate and fortune.” – Ch. 31
*
And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint’s treasure that we had come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.  – Ch. 33
PRINTABLES SET

We're glad you're here!

You're literally on our page about inspiring kids to love great books.  YAY! We're eager to share our passion for LitWitting and the work we've done for over a decade.

We're also eager to keep doing it! :)  So if you found this guide-page inspiring and useful,* please share it with your social world. And if you buy our printables for this book, thank you. We appreciate you helping us keep the lights on at LitWits! 

Happy teaching,
Becky and Jenny
Sisters, best friends, and partners
Sure, I'll support LitWits!
*We hope we've inspired you!  If you're feeling a little overwhelmed (we hear that sometimes), remember, you're LitWitting whether you do a lot or a little. You can't go wrong!  The learning is happening, trust us. Just take the pressure off and do what works for your kids, time, and budget.  It's all about inspiring kids to read for fun, so they want to read more—because kids who read more great books learn more great things.

On the other hand, if you'd like US to teach this book to your kids, check out our video workshop!

Now get ready for a bunch of wide-eyed kids having “aha!” moments . . . and you, grinning ear to ear because your kids are happily engaged with a great book.

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LitWits teaching ideas and materials for Treasure Island  by Robert Louis Stevenson
Copyright 2014 by LitWits Workshops, LLC.  All Rights Reserved.
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