Lesson 4: Women's Experience Working in the Factories
Rationale:
This lesson will focus solely on the experiences that women had during the Industrial Revolution. Their lives and gender roles changed as tasks moved outside of the home and into factories. Women had the opportunity to now work outside of the home. This lesson will explore how women’s identities changed during this time. How their gender roles and expectations might have stayed the same in some regard and changed in others. The culture surrounding women, their roles, and importance will also be analyzed. This lesson aims to look at women’s and young girl’s lives in terms of their work experience but also their lifestyle and life experiences outside of work and how these either obliged with social norms or changed them.
Curriculum Frameworks:
· Massachusetts Frameworks: USI.28 Explain the emergence and impact of the textile industry in New England and industrial growth generally throughout antebellum America. (H, E)
A. the technological improvements and inventions that contributed to industrial growth
B. the causes and impact of the wave of immigration from Northern Europe to America in the 1840s and 1850s
C. the rise of a business class of merchants and manufacturers
D. the roles of women in New England textile factories
· NCSS Theme: Individual Development and Identity- “Personal identity is shaped by family, peers, culture, and institutional influences. In order to understand individual development and identity, learners should study the influence of various times, cultures, groups, and institutions. The examination of various forms of human behavior in specific cultural contexts enhances the understanding of the relationships between social norms and emerging personal identities, of the social processes that influence identity formation, and of the ethical and other principles underlying individual action.”
Learning Objectives:
Students will learn about the various experiences that females had during the Industrial Revolution. Students should be able to compare and contrast males and females experiences during this time. Students will understand how gender roles and social norms changed as women began to work outside of the home.
Teaching Methods: Primary Sources
Procedure:
1. As an activator, students will play the brief interactive online game where they make life choices for a young Lowell mill girl.
2. Laptops will be set up around the room displaying various primary sources, along with other textual primary sources (10 primary sources in total).
3. Distribute packets which contain various questions to analyze each primary source.
4. Separate students into groups of two and place each group at a primary source.
5. Students will work with their partners to explore and analyze each primary source for 10 minutes.
6. Students will answer the questions in their packets relating to their primary source.
7. After 10 minutes, the class will rotate and each set of partners will analyze a new primary source. This rotation will take two days in total for all of the students to interact with all of the sources.
8. Once analyses are completed, bring class back together for a class discussion.
9. Lead class discussion about student’s findings. What were they most surprised to learn? What was the most interesting piece of information? Why would young women want to work in the mills? What were the positive aspects? What were the negative aspects of being a mill girl? If given the opportunity back then, would they have tried to work in a mill? Why or why not?
10. Instruct students to write a 1-2 page response to the prompt, “Imagine that you are a mill girl in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1853. Write a letter to your best friend back home detailing your experience so far. In your response, you should include background information about yourself and your family. How did you end up working at the mill? Include information about your daily life-work, the boardinghouse, friends, strikes, etc. Use the information from your primary source analysis to create a historically based fictional response.”
Assessment:
Students will be assessed on their responses in their packets, participation in the class discussion, and their 1-2 page response. These are forms of formative assessment.
Materials:
Link to the interactive game (http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/bringing-history-home/page_00/index.htm), packets of analysis questions, laptops, primary sources include: Bennett family letters, a letter to Boston newspaper from a factory girl, Timetable of bell schedule, Song of the Spinners, poem that concluded Lowell Women Workers’ 1834 petition, 1836 song lyrics, title page of Lowell Offering, photograph of two women weavers, illustration of female spinner, Boott Cotton Mill employee regulations
This lesson will focus solely on the experiences that women had during the Industrial Revolution. Their lives and gender roles changed as tasks moved outside of the home and into factories. Women had the opportunity to now work outside of the home. This lesson will explore how women’s identities changed during this time. How their gender roles and expectations might have stayed the same in some regard and changed in others. The culture surrounding women, their roles, and importance will also be analyzed. This lesson aims to look at women’s and young girl’s lives in terms of their work experience but also their lifestyle and life experiences outside of work and how these either obliged with social norms or changed them.
Curriculum Frameworks:
· Massachusetts Frameworks: USI.28 Explain the emergence and impact of the textile industry in New England and industrial growth generally throughout antebellum America. (H, E)
A. the technological improvements and inventions that contributed to industrial growth
B. the causes and impact of the wave of immigration from Northern Europe to America in the 1840s and 1850s
C. the rise of a business class of merchants and manufacturers
D. the roles of women in New England textile factories
· NCSS Theme: Individual Development and Identity- “Personal identity is shaped by family, peers, culture, and institutional influences. In order to understand individual development and identity, learners should study the influence of various times, cultures, groups, and institutions. The examination of various forms of human behavior in specific cultural contexts enhances the understanding of the relationships between social norms and emerging personal identities, of the social processes that influence identity formation, and of the ethical and other principles underlying individual action.”
Learning Objectives:
Students will learn about the various experiences that females had during the Industrial Revolution. Students should be able to compare and contrast males and females experiences during this time. Students will understand how gender roles and social norms changed as women began to work outside of the home.
Teaching Methods: Primary Sources
Procedure:
1. As an activator, students will play the brief interactive online game where they make life choices for a young Lowell mill girl.
2. Laptops will be set up around the room displaying various primary sources, along with other textual primary sources (10 primary sources in total).
3. Distribute packets which contain various questions to analyze each primary source.
4. Separate students into groups of two and place each group at a primary source.
5. Students will work with their partners to explore and analyze each primary source for 10 minutes.
6. Students will answer the questions in their packets relating to their primary source.
7. After 10 minutes, the class will rotate and each set of partners will analyze a new primary source. This rotation will take two days in total for all of the students to interact with all of the sources.
8. Once analyses are completed, bring class back together for a class discussion.
9. Lead class discussion about student’s findings. What were they most surprised to learn? What was the most interesting piece of information? Why would young women want to work in the mills? What were the positive aspects? What were the negative aspects of being a mill girl? If given the opportunity back then, would they have tried to work in a mill? Why or why not?
10. Instruct students to write a 1-2 page response to the prompt, “Imagine that you are a mill girl in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1853. Write a letter to your best friend back home detailing your experience so far. In your response, you should include background information about yourself and your family. How did you end up working at the mill? Include information about your daily life-work, the boardinghouse, friends, strikes, etc. Use the information from your primary source analysis to create a historically based fictional response.”
Assessment:
Students will be assessed on their responses in their packets, participation in the class discussion, and their 1-2 page response. These are forms of formative assessment.
Materials:
Link to the interactive game (http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/bringing-history-home/page_00/index.htm), packets of analysis questions, laptops, primary sources include: Bennett family letters, a letter to Boston newspaper from a factory girl, Timetable of bell schedule, Song of the Spinners, poem that concluded Lowell Women Workers’ 1834 petition, 1836 song lyrics, title page of Lowell Offering, photograph of two women weavers, illustration of female spinner, Boott Cotton Mill employee regulations