Activity One – Come Sail With Us!
Year 2 to Year 6
The Titanic was the most opulent, largest and most incredible ship ever built at the time of its maiden voyage. Hundreds of important people were on board, desperate to be there when history was made but not expecting the history that was to replace it. The ship’s owners’ Cunard, wanted as many people to enjoy the trip of a lifetime so set about promoting the ship.
In this activity, the children should be the ‘advertising executives’ charged with ‘selling’ the trip of a lifetime. They need to pick out all the information that would make people wish to sail on her and decide how they could promote it.
They could choose to do a poster, a radio advert, for radio was becoming popular at the time, a newspaper advertisement or a feature for the news detailing the luxury and innovation on board. The children may find that they’ll need to focus on just some of the good things about the ship so it’s also a good activity for work on grouping and prioritising. In carrying out the activity, remind the children, through examples, of the style used in posters of the day – several are available on Google Images, and look at the fonts that were used. If they are going to include pictures of people in their work, they’ll need to consider the way they were dressed and they’ll need to think about the language that was used in that era.
Activity Two – Ship’s Log
Year 2 to Year 6
Online there are examples of ship’s logs and a good American website that shows children how to fill out a log for a ship’s voyage. Both can be useful to help you with this activity.
See http://seagrant.psu.edu/education/stear/Ships%20Log.pdf
and http://sailsproject.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/wp-uploads/2010/07/shipslog3.jpg
Many websites and books tell you of the events leading up to the sinking, giving times when the events happened. Explain to the children what a ship’s log is and what it’s used for – it’s really a diary of what happens on board a ship.
Use the template provided here to fill in the information you find – if you can’t find some of it, don’t worry, because a bit of thought will help you fill in the blanks.
Activity Three – The News Report
Year 2 to Year 6
The world was horrified when it heard of the sinking of the Titanic and the world’s newspapers responded likewise. In this activity the children will compose a newspaper report in an appropriate tone reporting on the disaster. It’s nice if you can make their final copy look old so if you get the chance, soak pieces of paper in cold tea before drying flat. If you’ve done it properly you’ll still be able to pass them through a printer to add a newspaper template. You can singe the edges or ask the children to tear small pieces out of the edges to add extra ‘age’.
Ask the children to make notes of the key facts about the ship to open the piece, then make notes on the events that led up to the sinking. Finally, ask them to research some of the people, rich or poor that perished and add that as a ‘personal’ touch to the report. Finally, finish by adding a drawing of the Titanic’s final moments or of some of those that died.
Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher
Showing posts with label Titanic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Titanic. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Monday, 19 March 2012
Primary - History Activities Based on the Titanic Disaster
Activity One – Famous People
Year 3 to Year 6
The Titanic was THE ship of the day to be seen on. Because of that, many famous people were on board, many of whom drowned. Those that were on board came from important areas of life and it was thought that there might be a recession because of the loss of people who were important to the economy of Britain and the United States, but how important were the people?
This activity allows children to find out more about the famous people who were on board and gives them the story behind the names.
Find out who these passengers were and why they were important:
John Jacob Astor
Benjamin Guggenheim
Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon
Molly Brown
Isador and Ida Strauss
Several other passengers have interesting stories despite not being rich. Find out what you can about their last moments on the Titanic.
Activity Two – Could the Disaster Have Been Prevented?
Year 3 to Year 6
Many children as ‘what if’ questions about aspects of our teaching and it’s something I try to encourage as it helps them to think around an issue and get a deeper understanding of their learning. There are many ‘What if’ questions that can be asked about the Titanic as well as some ‘Why’ questions. Use some of the following to spark off a debate as to whether the outcome might have been different.
What would have happened if people hadn’t followed the ‘women and children first’ rule?
Why was the ship travelling at nearly full speed through an area it was told was full of icebergs?
The Titanic sank in April, would the story have been any different if the ship had sailed a month later or two months later?
Why did the captain not ask people to abandon ship earlier?
Would more people have survived if he had?
Any one of these can spark a lot of interesting debate based on the facts.
Activity Three - What Else Happened in 1912?
Year 2 to Year 6
I like to put events in the context of history and in 1912 we were already beginning to see the tensions that would lead to the Great War whilst in Britain, certainly, heads were buried in sand in terms of political reform and the world stage.
The key events we used was the change in the actions of the suffragettes to violent protest in an effort to secure the vote and the news that had just filtered through of Amundsen’s successful attempt to reach the South Pole and the news of the deaths of Captain Scott’s team.
Use the information on events in the months of 1912 to produce a newspaper, not just of the Titanic but also of the events around the time. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912 has many events listed from the serious to the interesting. In this way children can see that a newspaper doesn’t just deal with one story but a series that take place synchronously. An alternative is to produce a series of newspaper reports on the story of the Titanic from the days of its launch to the day the survivors landed in New York. In this way the children get to see how the story builds from pride and hope to disaster.
Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher
Year 3 to Year 6
The Titanic was THE ship of the day to be seen on. Because of that, many famous people were on board, many of whom drowned. Those that were on board came from important areas of life and it was thought that there might be a recession because of the loss of people who were important to the economy of Britain and the United States, but how important were the people?
This activity allows children to find out more about the famous people who were on board and gives them the story behind the names.
Find out who these passengers were and why they were important:
John Jacob Astor
Benjamin Guggenheim
Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon
Molly Brown
Isador and Ida Strauss
Several other passengers have interesting stories despite not being rich. Find out what you can about their last moments on the Titanic.
Activity Two – Could the Disaster Have Been Prevented?
Year 3 to Year 6
Many children as ‘what if’ questions about aspects of our teaching and it’s something I try to encourage as it helps them to think around an issue and get a deeper understanding of their learning. There are many ‘What if’ questions that can be asked about the Titanic as well as some ‘Why’ questions. Use some of the following to spark off a debate as to whether the outcome might have been different.
What would have happened if people hadn’t followed the ‘women and children first’ rule?
Why was the ship travelling at nearly full speed through an area it was told was full of icebergs?
The Titanic sank in April, would the story have been any different if the ship had sailed a month later or two months later?
Why did the captain not ask people to abandon ship earlier?
Would more people have survived if he had?
Any one of these can spark a lot of interesting debate based on the facts.
Activity Three - What Else Happened in 1912?
Year 2 to Year 6
I like to put events in the context of history and in 1912 we were already beginning to see the tensions that would lead to the Great War whilst in Britain, certainly, heads were buried in sand in terms of political reform and the world stage.
The key events we used was the change in the actions of the suffragettes to violent protest in an effort to secure the vote and the news that had just filtered through of Amundsen’s successful attempt to reach the South Pole and the news of the deaths of Captain Scott’s team.
Use the information on events in the months of 1912 to produce a newspaper, not just of the Titanic but also of the events around the time. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912 has many events listed from the serious to the interesting. In this way children can see that a newspaper doesn’t just deal with one story but a series that take place synchronously. An alternative is to produce a series of newspaper reports on the story of the Titanic from the days of its launch to the day the survivors landed in New York. In this way the children get to see how the story builds from pride and hope to disaster.
Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher
Friday, 16 March 2012
Primary - The Science of the Titanic
Activity One – Floating and Sinking
Year 1 to Year 6
Each year I’ve taught this aspect of science, the children have loved it. I think it’s the chance to muck about in water and also to make something that actually performs whilst testing it to destruction.
All those elements combine in our first activity which involves investigating why objects float or sink.
Collect a variety of materials together. We suggest plasticine, silver foil, wood of different types, pine, balsa and if possible a hardwood such as mahogany or ebony, paper and cling film.
With these the children are going to construct ‘boats’ and investigating their performance.
One of the most interesting concepts in science is tested in the first part of our experiment when you ask the question ‘Which of these materials will float and which will sink?’
Giving the children a lump of plasticine and a screwed up ball of foil they will use preconceived ideas and suggest that both will sink because metal sinks and the plasticine feels heavy. Equally they will say that wood floats, coming to the conclusion that if something is heavy it sinks, if it’s light, it floats. They can test their hypotheses in a sink, bowl or fish tank. Most will feel satisfied that they are right until you challenge them to make the plasticine and foil float. The trick is by displacing water with air and by moulding the foil and the plasticine into hull shapes they’ll find that they can make the materials float. Equally, in the absence of actually having a piece, you can tell them that ironwood sinks. An interesting extension to this activity is to cut a margarine tub so that it looks like the ribs of a boat and place it in the bowl. It will sink. Now ask the children to cover the ‘boat’ with clingfilm and try again. Going back to their original hypothesis you can ask the children which was heavier, the floating tub or the sinking one. Naturally because you’ve added a material to make the sinking one float, you’ve made it heavier.
Activity Two – How Long Did The Titanic Stay Afloat For?
Year 2 to Year 6
Using the information from the plans of the Titanic, construct a model using sixteen plastic boxes of equal size stuck together but with a small gap at the top of each box and show the children how the structure floats. Explain to them that this was the number of watertight compartments the Titanic had and that it was said that as long as no more than a quarter of them were damaged, the ship would stay afloat. You may need to add a little ballast to each container.
Now is the time to test the hypothesis. Cut a hole in the side of the first box and retest. Do this until the ‘boat’ begins to tip. As with the Titanic, the gap at the top allows water to flow into the ‘sealed’ compartments. Likewise you’ll find that the compartments of your model will fill eventually. This happened because six compartments were damaged causing the tilt that allowed further compartments to fill. It’s interesting to see whether the geometry of the sinking of your model follows that shown in the film.
Activity Three – Investigating Icebergs
Year 3 to Year 6
Fill small plastic bags with a litre of water and freeze them. Try to do it so the bag freezes with a corner completely filled with water.
Use the same containers of water as you used for testing for floating but add salt to them at the rate of 32 grams per litre. Check the temperature of the water, mark the water level on the side of the bowl and tip the ‘icebergs’ from their bags into the water. Remember to check the temperature every ten minutes and record it. Now mark the new level of water on the side of the bowl and using a jug extract and measure by what volume the water level rose. Divide this amount by the 1000ml you froze and compare the results between the groups. You should find the answers are roughly similar. This measurement tells you how much of an iceberg is underwater and can be compared to the 87% accepted by scientists.
Looking at the temperature of the water you should find that the ‘iceberg’ has cooled the temperature to below what we accept as being freezing point. The temperature of the sea where the Titanic sank was also below freezing but still liquid. If you set up a comparative experiment but using unsalted water you’ll find that the water temperature stays above freezing. You can tell children that is why local authorities use salt on roads in winter to lower the freezing point of any surface water.
You may see some variance in your iceberg measurements because of the way water expands as it freezes. You can test this by freezing a small plastic bottle of water and the children will find that it bulges. To find out by how much it’s expanded you can use displacement.
Year 1 to Year 6
Each year I’ve taught this aspect of science, the children have loved it. I think it’s the chance to muck about in water and also to make something that actually performs whilst testing it to destruction.
All those elements combine in our first activity which involves investigating why objects float or sink.
Collect a variety of materials together. We suggest plasticine, silver foil, wood of different types, pine, balsa and if possible a hardwood such as mahogany or ebony, paper and cling film.
With these the children are going to construct ‘boats’ and investigating their performance.
One of the most interesting concepts in science is tested in the first part of our experiment when you ask the question ‘Which of these materials will float and which will sink?’
Giving the children a lump of plasticine and a screwed up ball of foil they will use preconceived ideas and suggest that both will sink because metal sinks and the plasticine feels heavy. Equally they will say that wood floats, coming to the conclusion that if something is heavy it sinks, if it’s light, it floats. They can test their hypotheses in a sink, bowl or fish tank. Most will feel satisfied that they are right until you challenge them to make the plasticine and foil float. The trick is by displacing water with air and by moulding the foil and the plasticine into hull shapes they’ll find that they can make the materials float. Equally, in the absence of actually having a piece, you can tell them that ironwood sinks. An interesting extension to this activity is to cut a margarine tub so that it looks like the ribs of a boat and place it in the bowl. It will sink. Now ask the children to cover the ‘boat’ with clingfilm and try again. Going back to their original hypothesis you can ask the children which was heavier, the floating tub or the sinking one. Naturally because you’ve added a material to make the sinking one float, you’ve made it heavier.
Activity Two – How Long Did The Titanic Stay Afloat For?
Year 2 to Year 6
Using the information from the plans of the Titanic, construct a model using sixteen plastic boxes of equal size stuck together but with a small gap at the top of each box and show the children how the structure floats. Explain to them that this was the number of watertight compartments the Titanic had and that it was said that as long as no more than a quarter of them were damaged, the ship would stay afloat. You may need to add a little ballast to each container.
Now is the time to test the hypothesis. Cut a hole in the side of the first box and retest. Do this until the ‘boat’ begins to tip. As with the Titanic, the gap at the top allows water to flow into the ‘sealed’ compartments. Likewise you’ll find that the compartments of your model will fill eventually. This happened because six compartments were damaged causing the tilt that allowed further compartments to fill. It’s interesting to see whether the geometry of the sinking of your model follows that shown in the film.
Activity Three – Investigating Icebergs
Year 3 to Year 6
Fill small plastic bags with a litre of water and freeze them. Try to do it so the bag freezes with a corner completely filled with water.
Use the same containers of water as you used for testing for floating but add salt to them at the rate of 32 grams per litre. Check the temperature of the water, mark the water level on the side of the bowl and tip the ‘icebergs’ from their bags into the water. Remember to check the temperature every ten minutes and record it. Now mark the new level of water on the side of the bowl and using a jug extract and measure by what volume the water level rose. Divide this amount by the 1000ml you froze and compare the results between the groups. You should find the answers are roughly similar. This measurement tells you how much of an iceberg is underwater and can be compared to the 87% accepted by scientists.
Looking at the temperature of the water you should find that the ‘iceberg’ has cooled the temperature to below what we accept as being freezing point. The temperature of the sea where the Titanic sank was also below freezing but still liquid. If you set up a comparative experiment but using unsalted water you’ll find that the water temperature stays above freezing. You can tell children that is why local authorities use salt on roads in winter to lower the freezing point of any surface water.
You may see some variance in your iceberg measurements because of the way water expands as it freezes. You can test this by freezing a small plastic bottle of water and the children will find that it bulges. To find out by how much it’s expanded you can use displacement.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Primary - Numeracy Activities for the Titanic
Activity One – Comparing Numbers
Year 4 to Year 6
When you look at the story of the Titanic, much of it is about numbers, there’s the number on board, the number who died, proportions of men to women who died and so on. You can use a lot of the information in comparisons and investigations.
The early 20th century was the time of opulence and with ships it meant bigger, faster, more elegant and more expensive. There were several big ships notable at the time; the Titanic, the Mauretania, the Olympic, the Britannic, the Campania and the Lusitania. In recent times we have also seen the building of large cruise ships such as the Queen Victoria, The Allure of the Seas, The Oceana, The Liberty of the Seas and the Fantasia.
Interpreting data in maths often means looking at abstract data from maths books, no matter how closely the authors try to relate it to children’s lives. In this activity the information is related to the task and the interpretative questions have relevance too. Ask the children to research and compare numerical information on these and other ships making the comparison between ships of today and those of a hundred years ago. Use the chart provided here or make up one of your own for different data. Once the information has been collected ask questions such as:
How have the passenger numbers changed over the century? Why do you think this has happened?
How have the sizes of the ships changed over the century? Does this make them more or less environmentally friendly?
The ships’ power affects its speed but what else affects how fast the ship can travel.
Use proportion to compare the number of spaces on a lifeboat to the number of passengers. Why do you think the capacity isn’t exactly the same as the passenger numbers?
You can choose more questions of your own that test relationships between the pieces of information they have collected.
Activity Two – Time Distance and Speed
Year 4 to Year 6
In the early days of cruising, the idea was to win the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic but the focus on cruising has changed today. Using the speeds of the various ships you have investigated in Activity One, find out the distance between New York and Southampton and work out which one would have arrived first. Try to calculate to the nearest hour or minute, the times they would have taken to do the crossing.
Now ask the children to investigate and answer this question:
What is the focus of cruise travel today and how does the speed of a cruise liner help it to perform its job well.
Extension activities may well come from the children. Doing a similar task with my class I was asked, “How long would it have taken the Titanic to have reached Australia?” That’s another maths question and you can set it as an extension, adding other destinations such as ‘How long to travel around the world?’
Activity Three – Problem Solving
Year 4 to Year 6
A lot of the questions asked about the sinking of the Titanic involved maths and even today they make for interesting problem solving.
These examples show what you can do with the information and turn an answer to a mathematical problem into a discussion on the data.
The Titanic had 1,517 passengers on board yet only room for 1,178 passengers in its lifeboats. How many people would have had no spaces on the lifeboat? You can extend this into a debate by asking what did the ship builders expect them to do?
Only 20% of the men on board survived whilst 75% of the women did. There were 424 women and 1690 men on board. How many of each survived? A good point to discuss on this is why was the percentage so different and yet the numbers similar?
The Titanic had pumps that could clear water from inside the ship at 1700 tons an hour. The pumps worked for only ten minutes before being overcome with water. How much had they pumped out? Ask the children where they think the pumps were placed and how could they have been positioned differently to have worked longer?
Dave Lewis
Primary teacher
Year 4 to Year 6
When you look at the story of the Titanic, much of it is about numbers, there’s the number on board, the number who died, proportions of men to women who died and so on. You can use a lot of the information in comparisons and investigations.
The early 20th century was the time of opulence and with ships it meant bigger, faster, more elegant and more expensive. There were several big ships notable at the time; the Titanic, the Mauretania, the Olympic, the Britannic, the Campania and the Lusitania. In recent times we have also seen the building of large cruise ships such as the Queen Victoria, The Allure of the Seas, The Oceana, The Liberty of the Seas and the Fantasia.
Interpreting data in maths often means looking at abstract data from maths books, no matter how closely the authors try to relate it to children’s lives. In this activity the information is related to the task and the interpretative questions have relevance too. Ask the children to research and compare numerical information on these and other ships making the comparison between ships of today and those of a hundred years ago. Use the chart provided here or make up one of your own for different data. Once the information has been collected ask questions such as:
How have the passenger numbers changed over the century? Why do you think this has happened?
How have the sizes of the ships changed over the century? Does this make them more or less environmentally friendly?
The ships’ power affects its speed but what else affects how fast the ship can travel.
Use proportion to compare the number of spaces on a lifeboat to the number of passengers. Why do you think the capacity isn’t exactly the same as the passenger numbers?
You can choose more questions of your own that test relationships between the pieces of information they have collected.
Activity Two – Time Distance and Speed
Year 4 to Year 6
In the early days of cruising, the idea was to win the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic but the focus on cruising has changed today. Using the speeds of the various ships you have investigated in Activity One, find out the distance between New York and Southampton and work out which one would have arrived first. Try to calculate to the nearest hour or minute, the times they would have taken to do the crossing.
Now ask the children to investigate and answer this question:
What is the focus of cruise travel today and how does the speed of a cruise liner help it to perform its job well.
Extension activities may well come from the children. Doing a similar task with my class I was asked, “How long would it have taken the Titanic to have reached Australia?” That’s another maths question and you can set it as an extension, adding other destinations such as ‘How long to travel around the world?’
Activity Three – Problem Solving
Year 4 to Year 6
A lot of the questions asked about the sinking of the Titanic involved maths and even today they make for interesting problem solving.
These examples show what you can do with the information and turn an answer to a mathematical problem into a discussion on the data.
The Titanic had 1,517 passengers on board yet only room for 1,178 passengers in its lifeboats. How many people would have had no spaces on the lifeboat? You can extend this into a debate by asking what did the ship builders expect them to do?
Only 20% of the men on board survived whilst 75% of the women did. There were 424 women and 1690 men on board. How many of each survived? A good point to discuss on this is why was the percentage so different and yet the numbers similar?
The Titanic had pumps that could clear water from inside the ship at 1700 tons an hour. The pumps worked for only ten minutes before being overcome with water. How much had they pumped out? Ask the children where they think the pumps were placed and how could they have been positioned differently to have worked longer?
Dave Lewis
Primary teacher
Primary - The Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic
At the risk of throwing the whole curriculum into disarray I’m a firm believer in being aware of anniversaries of the people and events that have shaped the nation or the world. Not for me the rigid sticking to textbooks and schemes of work and thankfully my head teacher agrees. The change of government and the declaration that the National Curriculum was once again king rather than the QCA Schemes of Work, threw some members of the teaching profession into a tailspin. Thankfully the instruction wasn’t to consign QCA to the dustbin of history but to rely on it less heavily in favour of covering the required attainment targets by whatever creative means the teacher chose to employ. This year we have several opportunities to use national events to supplement and indeed enhance the curriculum whilst making children aware of how the world today was shaped. We have the Queen’s diamond jubilee, the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the Olympics and the 100th anniversary of the Titanic.
The 15th of April this year sees the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, probably the world’s most famous ship and immortalised in James Cameron’s film Titanic, one of the top grossing films of all time. Whilst a tragic event that will never be forgotten, the story makes an interesting topic to cover in schools, mostly because many children are familiar with it. I can remember working with a Year 2 class on the topic and they were amazed when listening to the story and the work they produced was some of the best they’d carried out that year.
As the anniversary approaches, events will be held around the country, at the dockyard in Belfast where the ship was constructed, at the port it first sailed from, Southampton, which already has several artefacts and memorials to the tragic event, and in its home city of Liverpool.
Most schools that use the story in the curriculum focus on the literacy that can be gained from it; writing letters to loved ones in the hope they’ll be found after the ship sinks or telling friends about the enormity and the facilities of the ship prior to its sailing.
You can expand the topic substantially without stretching credulity and in the accompanying activities we’ve tried to show you how you can spend up to a week of the curriculum around the time of the anniversary using the Titanic in different ways. You just know that with the national interest in the topic, the kids in your class are going to be asking questions and with our help, you’ll enable them to find out many of the answers.
Dave Lewis
Primary teacher
The 15th of April this year sees the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, probably the world’s most famous ship and immortalised in James Cameron’s film Titanic, one of the top grossing films of all time. Whilst a tragic event that will never be forgotten, the story makes an interesting topic to cover in schools, mostly because many children are familiar with it. I can remember working with a Year 2 class on the topic and they were amazed when listening to the story and the work they produced was some of the best they’d carried out that year.
As the anniversary approaches, events will be held around the country, at the dockyard in Belfast where the ship was constructed, at the port it first sailed from, Southampton, which already has several artefacts and memorials to the tragic event, and in its home city of Liverpool.
Most schools that use the story in the curriculum focus on the literacy that can be gained from it; writing letters to loved ones in the hope they’ll be found after the ship sinks or telling friends about the enormity and the facilities of the ship prior to its sailing.
You can expand the topic substantially without stretching credulity and in the accompanying activities we’ve tried to show you how you can spend up to a week of the curriculum around the time of the anniversary using the Titanic in different ways. You just know that with the national interest in the topic, the kids in your class are going to be asking questions and with our help, you’ll enable them to find out many of the answers.
Dave Lewis
Primary teacher
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