Children of the Titanic

While we have been researching The Titanic the children have become particularly interested in the children on board ship. Using the brilliant passenger lists and information from the Encyclopedia Titanica website I created a table showing brief details of about 10 children / families of children on board i.e. names, ages, class of cabin. The children then had to choose one child or family andthink up 5 questions they would like to find out about them. Of course the main interest was whether they had died or survived, but they came up with a real range of pertinent questions.They took the questions home to research on the internet with the web address provided. Children not on the Internet did their research at school.

They were really hooked by this - the morning after they took the questions home they were running in waving information and photographs they had downloaded - and read (I hasten to add!!) with their parents' help. They were fascinated by the stories of each child which we shared with the class as they wer revealed. They were also shocked to find out that only one out of all the 1st and 2nd class children died, whereas 53 out of 75 3rd class children died. (Many questions were asked about this and we need to explore this further).

Over the next two weeks everyone in the class had found out valuable information which we made into a 'Children of The Titanic' folder. The parents had also become really involved - there is a real feeling of productive obsession in the class right now, with me poring over Titanic books at weekends and parents and children working together to find out more and bring in books,photographs, magazine articles and other information. We even have a replica of the Daily Mirror the day after the wreck, reporting everyone on board safe!

I have been getting so many positive comments from parents that I have sent out a questionnaire about how they view our MoE work - three back already, absolutely wowed by the comments - will put some of them on my next post!!