Bring Titanic Traveling Trunks to Your Classroom!
Titanic traveling trunks, developed by The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s education team, are still available for teachers to reserve.
The National Archives traveling trunk program is for K – 6 educators. Trunks include a complete curriculum for grades K-6 based on the new CA HSS Framework, and educators may reserve a trunk for their classroom, school or district.
The goal of these trunks is to teach students how to closely examine and analyze artifacts. A few of the items included inside the trunk are a kerosene lamp, different documents such as a dinner menu, and a pocket watch.
The Titanic was found in 1985 during President Reagan’s administration, and quickly became a dive site for companies and explorers trying to get a piece of history. To protect the site and preserve it for generations, Reagan issued the R.M.S. Titanic Memorial Act of 1986 to designate the wreck as an international maritime memorial.
Though none of the artifacts were recovered from the Titanic wreck itself, the trunks allow students to imagine that it has found a floating trunk from the Titanic and must evaluate the contents.
The trunk primarily uses documents and activities pulled from DocsTeach (the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives), National Archives social media channels, and the holdings of the National Archives at New York City. Additionally, teachers who rent a trunk receive a lesson on using the National Archives Catalog to create mini-trunks and lessons of their own.
Please email ReaganEducation@nara.gov for more information about the curriculum, as well as to reserve a trunk.
