Using an Assembly Line as a Hook to Introduce Industrialization

By Jeff Burns

For several years, I’ve been introducing the industrialization of the Gilded Age with an assembly line simulation that’s a lot of fun for students and always leads to a great discussion. I got the inspiration from somewhere, of course, but I’m not sure where, maybe a History Alive (TCI, Teacher’s Curriculum Institute) activity, but I’ve adapted to my classroom and my personal demeanor.  You see, I’m not an overly effusive person; I’m pretty stoic, dour, emotionless – take your pick.  Students lovingly liken me to internet sensation Grumpy Cat. (If only I could channel my personality into tens of millions of dollars like Grumpy Cat.)

This topic usually falls immediately following Thanksgiving for me, so I begin class by spinning an elaborate tale. I tell the class that I had an epiphany over break. I finally figured out the vehicle that will make me a millionaire and allow me to quit teaching.  It’s the toy sensation that will change the world.  Children around the world will go into frenzy for it. I even have a Shark Tank appearance coming up next week to get backers.  I’m sharing it with the class because I need some help creating some initial inventory, and they can help me.

I use these slides to make my pitch.  (The clumsy cheesiness is part of the charm.)

 

 

 

 

The Burnsie bears a remarkable resemblance to myself.  You can make it anything you want, just some simple drawing or folded object.

For the next step, I use rows of five desks each, markers, and lots of paper cut into fourths.  I use scratch paper, extra one-sided copies saved up all year.  Give every student a marker and 4 o 5 paper squares.  Tell them you’re testing them to see who can get in on the ground floor of this money-making opportunity by producing a burnsie inventory. Their instructions are to draw as many burnsies as possible in 15-20 seconds. When time is up, have them count their completed burnsies and examine a few to compare their consistence, with each other and with the original.  Invariably, this first effort is not going to be successful.  I make  big deal about how many more have to be produced and how they have to be consistent.  No matter where they are in the world, children have to wake up to find a consistent, high-quality, handcrafted burnsie under their tree.  How do we achieve that?  Students offer suggestions like, more workers, using photocopiers, stamps, or stencils.  No, I say, that defeats the purpose of hand-crafted, made-in-America quality.  Someone will suggest an assembly line. OK, How does that work? The student explains, and we give it a shot.  I pit rows against each other.  Usually to save paper  at this point, I reduce the pool of workers to two rows pitted against each other and have volunteers staff the rows, while the rest of the class watches. However, you could have more rows competing.  Then each student in the row is assigned a part to draw:  head, face, body, arms, legs.  They have to draw their parts and pass it to the person behind.  For this round, I usually give them 45-60 seconds.  When time is called, we count and talk about consistency and quality (usually better).

Now, that’s better, but not quite good enough, how do we make more,  faster?  They offer various suggestions.  Maybe the boss (me) can offer positive incentives or negative disincentives for example.  We discuss various options.  Someone will then suggest (maybe following my lead) turning the desks side by side to facilitate the passing.  They may even switch positions or participants or make other suggestions that you may want to implement.  We then do 1 or 2 rounds of 45-60 seconds each, and the production is always better.

 

Finally, we debrief.  How did you feel during this simulation?  Participants will say they felt stressed, anxious, etc. What would it feel like to do real assembly line work today?  What are the physical and mental effects of such work?  Now put yourself in a factory in 1890 or so.  What other factors and effect would be involved.  We usually have a great discussion about working conditions.

The finishing touch is to show the classic candy factory scene from I Love Lucy.  It’s available on Youtube, even in new colorized form if you don’t want to shock the students too much.  While some students will have never seen it before (Sadder still, some students may not have a clue who Lucy or what I Love Lucy is.) but most of them will have seen Drake and Josh do almost exactly the same scene, and they are amazed that it was done fifty years earlier by someone else.

Citizenship and Beyond: Using Historical Case Studies

Teaching citizenship can be a real challenge. We value the ideals of citizenship and want it to be practiced. However evoking the application of such ideals is hard to accomplish.   How do teach it? Has it become a list of rights and responsibilities or is it something more? Do you model it?  How do you monitor student understanding of citizenship?

One way to address the issue is to use the theme of citizenship in the classroom. Themes can be important tools for defining a path of study. The use of themes helps to draw attention to a broader interpretation and understanding of history.  Using citizenship as a theme sets the stage for a study of both action and perspective by individuals as citizens in history. Events become more than dates as students use themes and case studies as a basis for analysis. A case study is an in-depth investigation of a single person over a period of time. By choosing biographical sketches as case studies for citizenship students can use the actions of citizens to developing an understanding of citizenship and the impact of citizens on society. Students will be able to observe how the understanding of citizen has evolved over time. It will also give students an opportunity to extrapolate about how they can use similar actions as citizens in their own lives.

To support the use of historical case studies to study citizenship, we developed a student strategy.  The strategy focuses on answering several questions. Our questions include:

• What can we learn from the past?

• How can people change their community? 

• How can individuals be agents of change?

The goal was to encourage students to use the lives of historical figures and these questions to better understand how citizens exercise their rights to impact their community. What kind of path did they PAVE? Did they create change? Did they ensure continuity? Students used the questions below to consider the lives and impact of citizenship in the past.

 

To support this strategy, we organized case studies around a few historical figures. We organized materials spotlighting the lives of George Washington, A. Philip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and William Cody.

We used two methods for incorporating case studies into the history classroom. One is to embed the case study in the unit of study. Students can study the actions of the individual as they study the period. Students can track the figure or follow them just as they might follow a celebrity via social media today. This provides students an opportunity to use the words and actions of the individual to illustrate the developments of the time period. The lives of these individuals become the examples of citizenship in action and the teacher directs how they are analyzed. The other option is to investigate the life of the individual as a small project as some point during the unit or year. Students they dedicate sustained time to the study of the person having previously acquired background knowledge. Each study can provide opportunity for extrapolating modern behavior equivalents to adopt.

We have successfully used this approach with both high school and elementary school students. It has been a great way to have student think about citizenship in greater depth and apply the attributes of citizenship. It is a challenge for students but the guiding questions supported reflection when they needed to revise the projects.  We encourage you to check out the site. The case studies and teacher support materials are on the site. Let us know how it works for you.

Teaching with Historic Places:Where Preservation and Education Meet

Guest Blogger: Stacy Rieke


(Stacy Rieke is an experienced high school teacher in Henry County Public Schools and currently teaches AP U.S. Government and Economics.  She is also a graduate student in the Heritage Preservation Program at Georgia State University in Atlanta.)

The Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) program is a project of the National Register Office of the National Park Service (NPS).  The program uses lesson plans and teaching materials related to places listed on the National Register of Historic Places to assist teachers in meeting content standards in Social Studies and other curriculum areas.  The program was conceived in the 1980s when the National Register Office and the National Trust for Historic Preservation both wanted to expand their educational outreach.  The program was officially launched in 1991.  Materials offered by the program on its website are created by NPS staff, teachers, historians, preservationists and curriculum specialists.   Collaboration with individuals from the National Archives, Smithsonian Institution, National Trust, National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), NPS regional and support offices, national parks, historical societies, universities, and numerous schools and school districts ensure the TwHP materials meet current curriculum standards and promote the use of primary source materials in the classroom.

One main objective of historic preservation efforts is to engage the wider community in understanding and embracing the need for and benefit of preservation activities.  The introductory video for the TwHP program explains the benefits of using historic places as primary sources to improve both teaching and learning.  It also describes lesson plans developed by the TwHP program and shares experiences of educators who use the program.)  In many instances, there can be a gap, real or perceived, between historic site experts who wish tailor their tours and site materials to those content standards which would make their tours more meaningful to teachers and students and teachers who are looking for quality primary source material to address their content needs.  The TwHP program seeks to bridge this gap.

One great TwHP lesson is “Castolon: A Meeting of Two Cultures”.  This lesson compares the Spanish and Anglo influences on settlements along the Texas-Mexico border region of the Rio Grande River focusing on the area that is now the Big Bend National Park (est. 1944). The lesson plan index for the TwHP is searchable in several different ways including by location or state, theme, time period, skill, primary sources, National Standards for History and Curriculum Standards for Social Studies.

The lesson is structured in five sections: the inquiry question, map analysis, reading analysis, image analysis and concluding activities.  The inquiry question in this lesson focuses student attention on a photograph of distant rock outcroppings, squat buildings, scrub trees and windmills asking, “Where might this photo have been taken?” and “What is the building in the foreground made of?”  These questions begin to engage the student in an exploration of place, bringing into focus the student’s understanding of what “sense of place” means.  

The map analysis section includes two maps, one of Texas and one of the area, including Castolon, that is now the Big Bend National Park.  Map questions include, “Why do you think the area was named Big Bend?” and “Many of the streams in this area run only intermittently. What does that you tell about the local climate?”  Exploring maps provides students with the opportunity to practice important social studies skills while further connecting them to the site itself.

The reading section includes two secondary sources produced by Clifford Casey in 1967 (“Settling the Big Bend” and “A Frontier Border Trading Post”) and two primary sources from 1919 and 1920 (“Captain Lafferty’s Report of 12 November 1919” and “Colonel Hornbrook’s Recruiting Announcement of February, 1920”)  The questions associated with each reading are a mix of “find it in the text” and higher level questions that require students to analyze the texts in order to construct interpretations and responses based on the texts. The readings provide students with the opportunity to imagine themselves on the Texas-Mexico border during the time period, including the opportunity to think about what something as seemingly mundane as recreation time might have been like for people living in that area at that time.

The image analysis section requires students to use their compare/contrast skills and context clues, along with their own prior knowledge, to link information from the images to experiences in their ever day lives.  The images range from the inside of a general store, to an abandoned cotton gin to desert vistas and ask students to think about building use and building materials in this period and in this place and how that might be illustrative of broader concepts of technology and exchange.

Finally, the activities section in this lesson provides teachers with three wrap-up options: an essay, a cross-curricular activity incorporating both Spanish and English vocabulary words and a local community research project.  All three options provide students with the opportunity to process the information they analyzed through looking at the maps and images and reading the texts. 

The lesson can be used with either middle or high school students and it provides a variety of instructional techniques that can be used to move students toward a stronger understanding of this period of time, including settlement patterns and the development of the economy and culture of southwestern United States.  Teachers can use the lesson as is, or adapt it and use it as a spring board for students to delve deeper into the concepts of encounter, exchange, borders and technology.  By providing teachers with tools like those found on the TwHP website, preservation professionals promote the importance of preserving historic places in a very practical and impactful way for students and teachers alike.  By using these materials, teachers provide students with unique opportunities to visit historic sites both far away and close to home and to “do history” like a historian.

Bringing Antebellum Reformers to Life

By Jeff Burns

The antebellum period was a tumultuous time in American History, and there were a lot of reformers and reform movements seeking to cure various societal ills.  Movements to end slavery and alcoholism coexisted with movements to improve the conditions of women, inmates, and the mentally ill.  New religious denominations spread across the country, and utopians tried to build perfect societies.  There are a lot of people that students need to know.

This period is a perfect period for speed dating, an activity I picked up from the AP U.S. History Teachers Facebook Group.  I have no idea of the origin, but it is a fun way to cover a lot of people quickly.  Each student chose a reformer from a list.  The list can be customized based on local or state standards, textbooks, teaching preferences, etc.

They then have a couple of days to research their character. I have them prepare a one page biography sheet and an “I am” poem in the voice of the character.  On the biography sheet, they answer these questions:

• What criticism of American society did the individual have?
• What methods did the person use to improve American life?
• What success did the individual have in promoting reform?
• What detail(s) of the person’s work made him or her an interesting historical figure?
• To what extent was the reformer obsessed with achieving an impractical goal through fanatical or impractical means?
• What lasting impact did the person’s reforms have on American society? 

They may also wear costumes or bring props that relate to their character for extra credit. 

On the appointed day, the desks are set up in pairs and one side of the pair moves every 2-3 minutes, to rotate around the room.  In that two to three minutes, each one of the pair shares important highlights about his or her character and takes notes.  

The next day we debriefed in small groups.  I had 6 stations set up around the room with big pieces of paper and markers.  One paper had the question “What did the Reformers have in common with each other?”  One said “How were the reformers different from the rest of Americans?”  The other 4 papers had straight lines, the small groups had to discuss and place their partial list of reformers on each spectrum.  Among the spectrum topics were:

Most Successful/Least Successful

Most Crazy (Unconventional)/Least Crazy(Unconventional)

Most Dedicated/Least Dedicated

Overly Idealistic/Practical & Pragmatic

Greatest Legacy/Least Legacy

The small groups rotated around the room addressing each question and contributing to each page.  Then we had a whole group discussion about their work and why they thought the way we did.

In the end, the students had actively engaged in learning about the reformers and the antebellum period. I do speed dating a few times a year now, as it can be easily adopted to almost any period when there are a lot of people. However, it doesn’t have to be just people.  Students can also speed date as ideas, books/documents, states, countries, etc. 

If you want to see the student instructions and list of reformers that I used, go here http://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/page/7362 and look for “Reformers Speed Dating.” There are numerous “I Am” poem templates online; you can easily find one that suits your needs.