Factory Life in the Industrial Revolution: A Field Trip Back in Time

Year after year, I never see my students more intensely immersed in (and even emotional about!) primary sources than during this lesson. Students take a deep dive through 13 pages of gripping and vivid primary source excerpts and images dealing with factory life and the worker experience in the Industrial Revolution. This can take the form of a stations activity or independent work.

Students are urged to think about what they read and examine as if they were an investigator or reporter, taking a field trip to these factories and mines and interviewing the subjects themselves. They keep a full "sensory" graphic organizer, tracking what they, as the investigator, would see, hear, smell, touch physically, or feel emotionally.

The culminating activity is a letter to the editor, writing to a historical newspaper from the perspective of themselves as an investigator. This may be in the style of a muckraker, similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, or in a style of the student's choosing.

Topics covered include: environmental conditions and urban development, pollution, accidents in textile factories, child labor and exploitation, food and working conditions in factories and mines, impact on children's physical and emotional development, etc.

This resource is mainly geared towards world history classes, although it could be used for U.S. history classes as well.

See the preview for resource excerpts.

You may be interested in the following resources:

The Urban Game: An Industrial Revolution Simulation

Industrial Revolution Lesson Plan and Fun Mini-Simulation

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Living-History

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