Learning about the Titanic

The 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is tomorrow. Scholastic had the first book of the I Survived..... series on sale for $1.00 a piece! What a great book! Both the 4th and 5th graders thoroughly enjoyed reading it.We started learning about the Titanic with an article in Weekly Reader. The more I use Weekly Reader the more impressed I've become. I'm always looking for nonfiction sources with great text features. This month WR had an awesome map/timeline of the sinking of the Titanic. I also found some great Youtube videos about the Titanic to use in class. After we finished I Survived The Sinking of  The Titanic we had to write a two word summary. Here is a picture of the poster we made together.

Some children chose words that described George, the main character, others chose words  to describe the feelings they had while reading the book. A few children felt an object from the story or a theme was most important. Coming up with only two words to describe a whole book can be challenging!

We also spent some time reading about the Costa Concordia that sank off the coast of Italy in January in an old WR edition.. The article gave us lots of room for comparison to the Titanic. It also had another great map to help us visualize what exactly happened to that ship.
If your students are very interested in the Titanic and you are looking for even more resources,
http://www.wegivebooks.org/books has the book Titanic Sinks! available to read online for free.  Christine