New York State Test Prep Social Studies 5 ContentGrade4 Industrial Growth and Expansion

There are many possible resources for teachers to use to reinforce this lesson; the following are a few suggestions for learning centers and for writing activities. Also found on this site you will find some hopefully helpful links to interesting, informative sites.

Trace your Family's Historical Roots

This is an excellent time to trace your family history. From where did your family originally come? They were immigrants from what country(ies)? Unless you have only Native American roots, your family came from somewhere else at some point in time.

Brainstorm with your students various ways to get that information. Hopefully they will include a family interview.
Provide them with a simple family tree. Of course the organizer for the tree is just a start. All families have a different number of branches! For those children who can get lots of information, encourage them to keep going back further and further and find the original time and place that the first immigrants arrived.
This is also a good set of data for a bar graph activity. From which country can you trace your roots?

If they are successful and can trace their roots back more than 2 or 3 generations, there are many helpful web sites, including this one found at the New York State Education Department site: http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/genealogy/tracimmi.htm

Research a Famous Immigrant

One of the immigrants mentioned in the lesson was Jacob Riis, an immigrant who was a photographer in New York City. He was instrumental to the documentation of the horrid living conditions found in the tenements of New York. Students can experience the "feel" for tenement living at the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street in New York City. For those who cannot make that trip, the following website has an excellent virtual reality tour through a tenement during Riis' time: http://tenement.org Please take the time to peruse this website as it really is geared to kids and gives them an excellent "feel" for life in a tenement.

Another immigrant mentioned was Alexander Graham Bell. PBS has an excellent movie on his life and all his inventions. http://www.pbs.org gives movie information and teacher's pages to go with it. There is even a National Historical Site honoring him in Canada.

The National Library of Medicine has a fine site on Elizabeth Blackwell. It can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/blackwell/ It contains an excellent timeline of her life and accomplishments.

So as you can see, information is plentiful on these immigrants and their contributions. Hopefully you will find these sites useful and get some ideas to further challenge your students.

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