This week we have been finding out about meal times onboard the Titanic. We found photographs of the dining rooms on the internet. Some of the great words we thought of to describe the First Class Dining Room were ‘majestic’, ‘very posh’, ‘perfect’ and ‘cool’!

We looked at some of the menus from Titanic’s voyage. We discovered that Third Class passengers had good food with lots of fruit and fresh bread. —Second Class passengers had 3 courses and lots of choice. —First Class diners had amazing 11 course meals!

We have decided to recreate a meal time from the Titanic. We started our preparations this week by making some ‘asparagus’ out of salt dough. This will be made into ‘Asparagus Salad with Champagne-Saffron Vinaigrette’, part of the last meal that First Class passengers had before the iceberg was struck.

Our asparagus (we still have to paint it green!).

We also made some plates for our Titanic dinner, decorated to a very high standard just like the originals.

Geordie would like to share with you how to make salt dough. It’s great fun to prepare and you can make all sorts of models from it.

Ingredients – 1/2 cup of salt, 1 cup of plain flour, 1/2 cup of luke warm water.

1) Put the salt into a cup.

2) Put flour into a cup.

3) Put the flour and the salt into a bowl

4) Put a little bit of the water into the bowl and stir it in.

5) Add more water bit by bit and keep stirring. Do not put too much water in or you might have to start again.

6) The mixture is finished when it is soft and doughy like play dough.

You can mould it into the shape you want then dry it out by baking it in the oven or cooking it in the microwave.

Geordie adds “I hope you have a good play with it”.

What we thought about this week’s topic work:

Josh thought the Titanic pictures were ‘amazing’ and said he really liked making the plates and the salt dough vegetables.

Nathan enjoyed playing with the flour best of all, he loved the feel of it on his hands :).

Class 3 have been finding out about the wireless operators who worked on the Titanic.

There were two of them and their main job was to send messages from the passengers and to pick up messages from other ships.

They sent messages using a spark gap transmitter.  We searched online and found a clip of a spark gap transmitter in action.

Josh really liked listening to the buzzing sound that was made by this transmitter, he said this was his favourite activity of the afternoon.

We could see why the wireless operators were nicknamed ‘Sparks’!

The messages were sent in morse code. We found a morse code app on the iPads and had a go for ourselves.

Class 3 have been continuing to find out about the crew of R.M.S. Titanic. This week we were learning about the mail clerks who worked on board. We discovered that R.M.S. stands for Royal Mail Ship and that the Titanic had been carrying more than 3000 bags of mail to America!

The Titanic had 5 mail clerks altogether, 3 American and 2 British. They worked very hard in the Mail Sorting Room, sorting more than 60,000 letters and parcels every day!

After the mail clerks had sorted the letters into bundles they put facing slips on top with their names and the destinations. We dressed up as mail clerks and made some facing slips.

Then we sorted some letters. Quite a job as they had to be filed in the correct pigeon holes according to American state!

We were very impressed that Nathan could tell us most of the American state names just from their abbreviations. Can you work out where the letters in holes AZ, FL and NY should go to?

Our thoughts on the Titanic’s mail clerks.

Jason: I liked the letter scene from the Titanic powerpoint where we got to see inside the Mail Sorting Room.

Josh: I liked doing the mail activities but if I had been on the Titanic I would have saved myself instead of trying to save the mail!

This week in Class 3  we have been finding out about the musicians who were members of the Titanic crew.

We discovered that there were 8 of them altogether. Most of them played stringed instruments (violins, cello and bass) and one of them played the piano.

We found out that they played as a quintet (a group of 5 ) and a  trio (a group of 3). We formed our own quintet and trio using the same instruments. We then got really creative and also performed as a quartet, a duet and even had some solo artists!

Jason thought the music session was brilliant. He loved wearing the waistcoat. He  dueted with Miss Robertson.  Miss Robertson played the piano and Jason was on the violin. They both sang as well. Jason named the band ‘Sinkless’. They created a classic song called ‘The Titanic is going down’.

Josh tried out the violin, the cello, the bass and the piano. He really liked playing the bass because it was giant (and very heavy!).

At topic time Class 3 have been discovering more about the Titanic. On Wednesday we found out what it would have been like to work in the engine room.  We had great fun dressing up as the stokers who shovelled coal into the furnaces to power the ship. Very hard and very hot work!

We hope to make a mini movie about the Titanic crew so you may see some of that in a few weeks time!

On Wednesday we also went to the music room and  experimented with lots of instruments.

Here are our views on our music session:

Geordie thought that playing the instruments was super cool. He liked everything.

Jason tried the piano, the keyboard and the guitar. He liked the piano best.

Nathan really liked playing the guitar and piano.

Josh thought the music time was good and is looking forward to performing his music to others.

Aidan has music on a Tuesday. He particularly enjoys using the xylophone and the metallophone. He is in the process of creating some pieces of music which will be recorded onto a CD. The rest of us in Class 3 are looking forward to hearing it 🙂