SUBJECT: Social Studies
GRADE: Ninth
TECHNOLOGY: Word Processor
BY: Karla James

Industry and Invention

SOL 9.9: The student will analyze and explain the effect of the Industrial Revolution in terms of : How scientific and technological changes brought massive social and cultural change.

Objectives: The purpose of the lesson is to demonstrate how the introduction of new inventions and new industries boosted the American economy and gave rise to new businesses and new wealth.

Materials: Chalkboard, Chalk

Teaching/Modeling:

I. Introduce the idea of a transportation revolution that preceeded and promoted the industrial revolution. Discuss the importance of steamboats, canals, and trains and how they made traveling easier and less expensive, and thus allowed for faster and easier means of transporting goods.
* also mention the greater access and conection persons in rural areas had with cities.

II. Explain the growth of urban areas and the need for transportation, and how this necessity would lead to other inventions - such as improvement in the steel industry, textile industry, garmet making industry, the oil industry, the meat packing industry, and the railroad industry

III. Introduce men like Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller
*describe how they became milionaires by developing monopolies in the steel and oil industries
*explain the idea of the American Dream
III. * discuss the reasons why it existed during the late 1800s and if it remains a common theme today


IV. Explain the problems of massive urbanization and immigration that coincided with the industrial revolution, and the impact the “American Dream” had upon the immigrant population

V. Introduce “Horatio Alger” stories and the impact they had upon American lifestyles and beliefs

Check for Understanding: Have students take notes during the lesson

Guided Practice: Have students create their own Horatio Alger story based upon the lesson and the chapter. Students will write a story explaining how they lived among the lower socio-economic classes either in America or a European country and how they were able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” to achieve the American Dream in a new urban and industrial age of America. Students will make use of Word Perfect to complete their stories using self-determined font size, typeface, color and body style of thier short story. Students may also choose to write a present day Horatio Alger story.