Virtual Field Trips
Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) provide students with an in-depth look at a topic related to the Industrial Revolution. Our professional educators facilitate virtual interactions that offer all the energy and engagement of TIHC’s in-person programs. VFTs can be conducted in a classroom (all students in one classroom on one projecting device), home (students at home on individual devices), or classroom and home simultaneously. VFTs use a passcode-protected Zoom account. Programs are approximately 45 minutes long, limited to 25 students each, and align with state and national social studies and/or science standards.
Cost: The cost is $125.00 per program.
Call us at 978-970-5080 to reserve your program date and time.
| Title & Link | Program Description | Grade Level
(Relevant to state framework) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mill Girls: Life and Work in an Industrial City | Follow the journey of a mill girl from her family farm in the New England countryside to her new job operating a loom in Lowell’s Boott Cotton Mills.
Students will meet two mill girls during their virtual visit to the boardinghouse and weave room, learning about each girl's unique experience of life and work in a textile mill, and experience for themselves a bit of what it was like to work in the mills. | Massachusetts Grade 5
Other states Grades 4 or 6 | |
| Immigration, Culture, and Community | Discover the stories of people who came from all over the world to Lowell and make up the city’s diverse community today. By investigating primary sources, oral histories, and objects, students learn about the immigrant groups who arrived in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, including why they came, how they met the challenges of settling in a different environment, and how they contributed to their new community. | Massachusetts Grade 4
Other states Grades 5 or 6 | |
| Waterpower: Powering a Revolution | Explore how Lowell’s many integrated systems, including waterwheels and turbines, transformed the potential energy of the Merrimack River into kinetic energy that ran the machines.
Through a series of investigations led by one of our educators, students generate hypotheses and analyze data to determine the most efficient ways to distribute energy to all the mills' machines. | Grades 4-8 | |
| The Human Impact on the Living Planet | Tracing the water cycle, from precipitation to surface water runoff, students investigate how humans’ impact the health of the environment. Through stories of everyday activities, students make predictions, conduct observations, and formulate conclusions as our staff conduct live experiments. After observing the test of a simple water filter, students propose changes to improve the design and discuss ways in which their community can reduce its impact on Earth’s resources. | Grades 4-8 | |
| Change Over Time: Through Children's Eyes | Students travel back in time to “meet” children in a 17th-century Pennacook village, an 18th-century farm town, and a 19th-century industrial city. In each time-period, they help with chores and jobs. Using visual analysis skills with artwork and artifacts, students explore how children lived during periods of great change and then imagine what changes might be in store for their community. | Grades 3 and 4 | |
| Engineering a Better Future | Crushed fingers, broken legs, cuts and bruises … these were just some of the injuries suffered by 19th-century mill workers as they operated large, dangerous machines. Students will examine the Boott Cotton Mills’ looms and apply the engineering design process to identify safety problems and propose possible solutions. | Grades 3-5 | |
| Citizens Respond to an Industrial Crisis | What are the rights and responsibilities of citizens when it comes to addressing a problem in their community? What civic tools do they have at their disposal and how can they apply them to bring about a solution? Students will investigate an incident of environmental pollution that impacts the health of the community and develop a strategy to address the issue through civic actions. | Grade 8 | |
| The Same, Only Different | In this engaging program, students follow the correspondence between two 2nd-grade students from Lowell who become connected (as “digital pen-pals”) through a school project. As they share insights into their families, hobbies, and cultural traditions, the students realize that even though their lives may appear to be different, they have more in common than they initially thought. | Grade 2 |