For more lessons and resources visit:
- Pre-Visit Lesson Plans
- Other Teacher Resources
Post-Visit Lesson Plans and Resources
We’ve prepared program-specific activities that extend your field trip experience back in the classroom. The activities will help students reinforce concepts learned during their Tsongas Industrial History Center experience, and provide an opportunity for reflection and connection to other topics and concepts. We have also included resources mentioned during your visit by our Museum Teachers/Rangers.
Click on "Title of Activity" to download a PDF document of the lesson plan or activity.
Bale to Bolt
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Stay or Go? | Students write a letter advising a friend whether or not they should come to work in Lowell’s mills. | 5-8 |
| Questions for Reflecting on Boardinghouse Life | Students can reflect on what life was like for Lowell’s “mill girls” by reading the letters home they wrote home, and responding to these questions. | 5-8 |
| Boott Cotton Mills Museum Weave Room | Information about the Museum's early 20th century working weave room. | 3-12 |
The World of Barilla Taylor: One Mill Girl’s Experience in Lowell | This interdisciplinary set of primary sources provides students with insight into one mill girl’s experience in Lowell. Includes family letters, newspaper articles, mill and hospital records, receipts, advertisements, and lithographs. | 5-12 |
Change in the Making
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Advantages and Disadvantages of the Industrial Revolution | The Industrial Revolution changed, for better or worse, the way Americans worked, lived, and used the land.
Students will use specific details to discuss advantages and disadvantages of industrialization on the lives of the early mill workers and on the students’ lives today. | 3-5 |
| What can be made out of a bale of cotton? | This colorful chart shows all of the different uses for cotton. | 3-4 |
Engineer It!
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Innovate it! | In this activity, student teams will use the engineering design process to innovate a new design for a school desk. | 3-8 |
Exploring the Immigrant Experience
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| My Family's Immigrant History | Students trace their own roots to find out about their family’s immigrant history. They create a patchwork-design mural sharing their own family’s stories. | 3-5 |
Farm to Factory
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| How People Lived and Worked Before and After the Industrial Revolution | Students will use images of a farm and a factory to further explore the changes in the way people lived and worked during the American Industrial Revolution. | 3-5 |
Industrial Watershed
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Topographic Maps | This lesson illustrates reviews the concept of a water table, its relationship to landforms, and how the surface topography land is represented on a map. | 5-8 |
Power to Production
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Thinking About Power Today | This activity asks students to compare various sources of energy used in the United States today. | 6-8 |
| Splash! | This website connects you to the data your class collected during their Power to Production field trip, graphs of the data, and additional resources for using that data in the classroom. | 4-12 |
River as a Classroom
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| If / Then | Causes and effects are very important to science. In this lesson, students will examine the causes and effects of natural acts and human activity on the environment. | 5-8 |
Workers on the Line
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Work Awareness: Exploring Jobs and Careers | This activity asks students to explore the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for various types of jobs. | 4-6 |
| Mule Spinners Strike | This activity places students in an 1875 role-play, in which they assume the role of either a mill agent or one of two different groups of workers who are in competition with each other. | 8-12 |
The World of Barilla Taylor: One Mill Girl’s Experience in Lowell | This interdisciplinary set of primary sources provides students with insight into one mill girl’s experience in Lowell. Includes family letters, newspaper articles, mill and hospital records, receipts, advertisements, and lithographs. | 5-12 |
Yankees and Immigrants
| Title of Activity | Brief Description | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Sharing Immigrant Experiences | Assuming the persona of the immigrant they portrayed in the immigration workshop, students create letters or journal entries imaging their experience of immigrating to America. | 3-5 |
| Resources on Contemporary Immigration to Massachusetts | Web resources that provide data on refugees and immigrants to Massachusetts, and the social agencies who help them to adjust to life in the United States. | 4-5 |
| Cross-writing Letter | A digital copy of the letter shared as part of the mill girl’s bandbox. | 3-5 |
| Role Card Worksheet | This worksheet helps students “unpack” more information about the immigrant character they played during the workshop. | 3-5 |
| "A School for Kids Like Me" | "A School for Kids Like Me" introduces students to the controversial 1830s issue of whether or not public funds should support what was essentially a parochial school in Lowell's Irish Neighborhood. | All grades |
| Cambodian Refugees in Lowell | This online exhibit features mini-biographies of Cambodian refugees who moved to Lowell in the 1980s-1990s, and photographs of cultural objects related to the Cambodian community in Lowell. The biographies and objects are from the Cambodian “luggage” in our Yankees and Immigrants program. Part of the Smithsonian Institution’s Learning Lab. | All grades |
| "Their Stories: Lowell’s Youth and the Refugee Experience” | This is an online version of an exhibit at Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts. It features the stories of five refugees who came to Lowell as teenagers. Read their stories and hear, in their own words, why they left their home countries, their experiences as refugees, and how they are adapting to life in Lowell. Part of the Smithsonian Institution’s Learning Lab. | All grades |
| The Next Generation of Lowell's Immigration Stories | Student interns from Lowell High School interviewed their fellow students who were immigrants or refugees to Lowell. The four interviewees shared their thoughts about what it was like to leave their home country, their first impressions of Lowell, and how they have adjusted to life here by integrating their home culture with their new American culture. | All grades |
