This three lesson unit teaches 5th grade students about the Titanic. In the first lesson, the media specialist reads excerpts from books about the Titanic to spark interest. Those books are then loaned to the classroom. The second lesson shows a video about the ship's discovery. The third lesson uses a media specialist created jog with primary sources about the Titanic for students to explore. The goal is for students to read the 25 books required and learn about the famous shipwreck.

1. Shauna Sanders
Reading Enrichment Unit
FRIT 7136, Dr. Repman
Fall 2010
Title of Unit The Sinking Truth about the
Titanic
Grade
Level
5th
Grade
Curriculum
Area
English Language Arts Time
Frame
3 Lessons
Standards
Georgia Performance Standards:
ELA5R2: The student consistently reads at least twenty-five books or book equivalents (approximately
1,000,000 words) each year. The materials should include traditional and contemporary literature (both
fiction and non-fiction) as well as magazines, newspapers, textbooks, and electronic material. Such
reading should represent a diverse collection of material from at least three different literary forms and
from at least five different writers.
Standards for the 21st
Century Learners
Standard 1: Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge.
1.1.6 Read, view and listen for information presented in any format (ex: textual, visual, media, digital) in
order to make inferences and gather meaning.
Reading Enrichment Lesson 1

2. Lesson: The media specialist will have approximately 15 minutes to teach each lesson within this unit so
the students will still have 10 minutes to select their books for this week’s visit. The standard listed
above for fifth grade language arts requires students to read a variety of materials to meet their required
twenty-five books or book equivalents. Therefore, the media specialist chose a fun and quite interesting
topic to help students meet part of this requirement.
The students will be shown the book selection we have in our media center on the Titanic. There are 6
books about the topic, one of which is Reference, and 2 of which are fiction. The media specialist will
spend the first lesson reading short excerpts from the books to get the students excited about reading
them on their own. After the lesson, the media specialist will check the 6 books out to the homeroom
teacher to keep in her room for the students to read during their reading block.
Reading Enrichment Lesson 2
Lesson: The students will get to watch a video that mentions the Titanic and how the ship was finally
located at the bottom of the ocean in 1985. The video is called, Sunken Treasure and it is one of the
Reading Rainbow Series. After the lesson, we will discuss the information from the video and will also
briefly discuss some of the books the students have been reading in their rooms. Hopefully, the students
have been reading through some of the Titanic books from the previous week’s lesson and will have
questions or comments to add about the information they have read.
Reading Enrichment Lesson 3
Lesson: The last part of our Titanic Enrichment Unit will consist of viewing a Jog that the media specialist
created using only primary sources. The Jog can be found at http://3.ly/Ce5m. The link will also be
found on the Roan Shared Folder for the students to watch and explore during their weekly computer lab
visits. The students will be able to learn what a primary source is and navigate through footage of the
ship, pictures of passengers, listen to survivors talk about the wreck and rescue and many more
interesting artifacts. Hopefully, after these three lessons, the students will want to explore other
information about the Titanic on their own using the Internet and possibly the public library.
Resources Used for this Unit

3. o Tonight on the Titanic by: Mary Pope Osborne (1999)
o Inside the Titanic by: Ken Marschall (1997)
o Polar: The Titanic Bear by: Daisy Corning Stone Spedden
(1994)
o The Titanic: Lost and Found by: Judy Donnelly (1987)
o Back to the Titanic! By: Beatrice Gormley (1994)
o I Survived: The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 by: Lauren Tarshis
(2010)
o Titanic by: Anna Claybourne and Katie Daynes (2006)
o Sunken Treasure: Reading Rainbow Video #70