raft assignment industrial revolution

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Industrial Revolution Classroom Activities and Project Ideas

These are classroom activities and project ideas for kids and teachers to use in your unit studies of the industrial revolution. these projects and activities  can be adjusted for any grade. we hope you'll find some ideas you can use..

Project: 10 Industrial Revolution Project Ideas from Murrieta Schools

Project: The Industrial Revolution, an Epic Tale: Everything you need with project ideas and handouts for creating the Industrial Revolution as an epic tale working in groups

Photo-Essay Project : Use a powerpoint or a multi-media collage with captions to compare and contrast child labor during the Industrial Revolution to modern child labor. Students can, if they choose with teacher permission, focus on a different comparison, for example - comparing housing then and now, or factory conditions for all workers then and now.

Quarter Project: Industrial Revolution (simple research project with handout of format)

Projects: Character Cards, Who's got the answer to the problem, and more

Classroom Activities: Background information, Invention Match up, Create a new invention

Industrial Revolution Simulation/Game for the Classroom

Simulation: The Assembly Line Classroom Simulation

Factory Simulation: Workers on the Line

Inquiry Based Project: Did the Industrial Revolution really improve the lives of the American people?

Sweatshop Activity (classroom activity and lesson plan)

Simulation: The Urban Game

Library of Congress - Industrial Revolution materials for classroom use and homework help

Choose Your Own Adventure from over 70 different classroom activities and possible assignments

Lesson Plans: The Industrial Revolution Lesson Plans with Classroom Activities

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The Industrial Revolution for Kids (Index)

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Unit 2: The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions starting in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.

The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to expand exponentially. In the two centuries following 1800, the world’s average income increased over 10-fold, while the world’s population increased over 6-fold.

Starting in the later part of the 18th century (1700’s), there began a transition in parts of Great Britain’s previously manual labor and animal based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with the mechanization of the textile industries, the development of improved iron manufacturing and the increased use of refined coal.Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways.

The introduction of steam power fueled primarily by coal, wider use of water wheels and powered machinery helped drive the industrial revolution.  These effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world, a process that continues as industrialization. The impact of this change on society was enormous.

The first Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation.

Essential Questions

• What factors led to the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England?
• What kind if impact did the Industrial Revolution have on society and the relationship between classes?
• What important demographic, political and social changes occurred as a result of the Industrial Revolution?
• Is Progress at the price of human suffering justified?  
• Industrialization
• Necessity is the Mother of Invention
• Costs of Industrialization
• Accumulation of Capital
• Assignment 1: An Agricultural Revolution?
• Assignment 2: What is the Industrial Revolution?
• Assignment 3: Consequences
• Assignment 4: Consequences part 2
• Assignment 5: Working Conditions and Class tensions
• Assignment 6: Spread of the Industrial Revolution
• Assignment 7: Industrialization in America
• Assignment 8: Capitalism by Adam Smith
• Assignment 9: “Workers of the World Unite!”
• Assignment 10: Economic Systems
• Assignment 11: Unionization

Unit 2 Industrial Revolution Notes

Using the RAFT Writing Strategy

About this Strategy Guide

This strategy guide introduces the RAFT technique and offers practical ideas for using this technique to teach students to experiment with various perspectives in their writing.

Research Basis

Strategy in practice, related resources.

The more often students write, the more proficient they become as writers.  RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer and how to effectively communicate their ideas and mission clearly so that the reader can easily understand everything written.  Additionally, RAFT helps students focus on the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they'll be writing about. By using this strategy, teachers encourage students to write creatively, to consider a topic from multiple perspectives, and to gain the ability to write for different audiences. In the book, Strategic Writing , Deborah Dean explains that writing for differing purposes and audiences may require using different genres, different information, and different strategies. Developing a sense of audience and purpose in writing, in all communication, is an important part of growth as a writer.

RAFT assignments encourage students to uncover their own voices and formats for presenting their ideas about content information they are studying.  Students learn to respond to writing prompts that require them to think about various perspectives:

• R ole of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A movie star? The President? A plant?
• A udience: To whom are you writing? A senator?  Yourself? A company?
• F ormat: In what format are you writing? A diary entry? A newspaper?  A love letter?
• T opic: What are you writing about?

Santa, C., Havens, L., & Valdes, B. (2004). Project CRISS : Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies . Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.

Dean, Deborah. 2006. Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and Beyond in the Secondary English Classroom . Urbana, IL: NCTE.

• Explain to your students the various perspectives writers must consider when completing any writing assignment.  Examples of different roles, audiences, formats, and topics can be found in a list of Picture Book RAFTs by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey .
• For instance, if students are reading To Kill a Mockingbird , you may have students respond to the issues in the story as various characters to different audiences in multiple formats.
• Have a class think-aloud to come up with ideas for the piece of writing that you will create as a group.  Model on a whiteboard, overhead projector, or chart paper how you would write in response to the prompt.  Allow student input and creativity as you craft your piece of writing.
• Give students another writing prompt (for which you have already chosen the role, audience, format, and topic) and have students react to the prompt either individually or in small groups. It works best if all students follow the same process so the students can learn from the varied responses of their classmates.
• Choose a few students to read their RAFT aloud.  Have a class discussion about how each student created their own version of the RAFT while using the same role, audience, format, and topic.
• As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, give students a list of options for each component and let them choose their role, audience, format, and topic.
• Eventually, students may choose a role, audience, format, and topic entirely on their own.  Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content when shared.
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You are here, hist 202: european civilization, 1648-1945,  - industrial revolutions.

The Industrial Revolution was for a long time treated as a decisive break in which some countries, specifically England, innovated and progressed rapidly while others were left behind. This type of analysis leads many historians to overlook the more gradual process of industrialization in countries like France, and the persistence of older methods of artisanal production alongside new forms of mechanization. To understand the Industrial Revolution it is also necessary to take into account the Agricultural Revolution; the consequences of these twin developments include urban expansion and the “proletarianization” of rural laborers. Among the consequences of industrialization for workers are the imposition of industrial discipline and the emergence of schemes such as Taylorism dedicated to more efficiently exploiting industrial labor.

Lecture Chapters

• Industrialization as an Intensification of Existing Forms of Production
• The English Catalysts: The Agricultural Revolution and Increasing Urban Populations
• Women's Work in the Industrial Revolution
• The Rise of Class Consciousness
• Industrial Discipline and the Rise of the Foreman

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Industrial Revolution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 27, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Industrial Revolution was a period of scientific and technological development in the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies—especially in Europe and North America—into industrialized, urban ones. Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be produced in mass quantities by machines in factories, thanks to the introduction of new machines and techniques in textiles, iron making and other industries.

When Was the Industrial Revolution?

Though a few innovations were developed as early as the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution began in earnest by the 1830s and 1840s in Britain, and soon spread to the rest of the world, including the United States.

Modern historians often refer to this period as the First Industrial Revolution, to set it apart from a second period of industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries. 

Spinning Jenny

Thanks in part to its damp climate, ideal for raising sheep, Britain had a long history of producing textiles like wool, linen and cotton. But prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British textile business was a true “cottage industry,” with the work performed in small workshops or even homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers.

Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the spinning jenny (a wooden frame with multiple spindles), the flying shuttle, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier. Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.

More efficient, mechanized production meant Britain’s new textile factories could meet the growing demand for cloth both at home and abroad, where the British Empire’s many overseas colonies provided a captive market for its goods. In addition to textiles, the British iron industry also adopted new innovations.

Chief among the new techniques was the smelting of iron ore with coke (a material made by heating coal) instead of the traditional charcoal. This method was both cheaper and produced higher-quality material, enabling Britain’s iron and steel production to expand in response to demand created by the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) and the later growth of the railroad industry. 

Impact of Steam Power 

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine . Called the “atmospheric steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts.

In the 1760s, Scottish engineer James Watt began tinkering with one of Newcomen’s models, adding a separate water condenser that made it far more efficient. Watt later collaborated with Matthew Boulton to invent a steam engine with a rotary motion, a key innovation that would allow steam power to spread across British industries, including flour, paper, and cotton mills, iron works, distilleries, waterworks and canals.

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

Transportation During the Industrial Revolution

Britain’s road network, which had been relatively primitive prior to industrialization, soon saw substantial improvements, and more than 2,000 miles of canals were in use across Britain by 1815.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

Banking and Communication in the Industrial Revolution

In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith , who is regarded as the founder of modern economics, published The Wealth of Nations . In it, Smith promoted an economic system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of government interference.

Banks and industrial financiers soon rose to new prominence during this period, as well as a factory system dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the early 1790s.

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States.

Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad signaling, as the speed of the new steam-powered trains created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.

Labor Movement 

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation, miserable housing conditions and a lack of safe drinking water.

Meanwhile, even as industrialization increased economic output overall and improved the standard of living for the middle and upper classes, poor and working class people continued to struggle. The mechanization of labor created by technological innovation had made working in factories increasingly tedious (and sometimes dangerous), and many workers—including children—were forced to work long hours for pitifully low wages.

Such dramatic changes and abuses fueled opposition to industrialization worldwide, including the “ Luddites ,” known for their violent resistance to changes in Britain’s textile industry.

Did you know? The word "luddite" refers to a person who is opposed to technological change. The term is derived from a group of early 19th century English workers who attacked factories and destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They were supposedly led by a man named Ned Ludd, though he may have been an apocryphal figure.

In the decades to come, outrage over substandard working and living conditions would fuel the formation of labor unions , as well as the passage of new child labor laws and public health regulations in both Britain and the United States, all aimed at improving life for working class and poor citizens who had been negatively impacted by industrialization.

The Industrial Revolution in the United States

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”

The United States followed its own path to industrialization, spurred by innovations “borrowed” from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli Whitney . Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin (short for “engine”) revolutionized the nation’s cotton industry (and strengthened the hold of slavery over the cotton-producing South).

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems.

By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.

Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Historians continue to debate many aspects of industrialization, including its exact timeline, why it began in Britain as opposed to other parts of the world and the idea that it was actually more of a gradual evolution than a revolution. The positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution are complex.

On one hand, unsafe working conditions were rife and environmental pollution from coal and gas are legacies we still struggle with today. On the other, the move to cities and ingenious inventions that made clothing, communication and transportation more affordable and accessible to the masses changed the course of world history.

Regardless of these questions, the Industrial Revolution had a transformative economic, social and cultural impact, and played an integral role in laying the foundations for modern society. 

Photo Galleries

Robert C. Allen, The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007  Claire Hopley, “A History of the British Cotton Industry.” British Heritage Travel , July 29, 2006 William Rosen, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention . New York: Random House, 2010 Gavin Weightman, The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914 . New York: Grove Press, 2007 Matthew White, “Georgian Britain: The Industrial Revolution.” British Library , October 14, 2009 

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Industrial Revolution RAFT assignment

Industrial revolution inventions, spinning machine invented.

Water Frame invented

The spinning mule invented.

invention of the power loom

telegraph invented

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industrial revolution assignment

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