Intro to the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is my favorite unit to teach! I love everything I do during this unit. Just last year I added this activity as an intro to the Industrial Revolution. I heard about it from another teacher at my school and I was intrigued so I did it last year. My students reacted just as the teacher said they would last year and again this year. It was perfect!

Students come in and I hand them a coloring sheet. I tell them we are going to relax and take a brain break and color for the first 10-15 minutes. The students who know me better are always a little skeptical..."she's tricking us into learning!!!!" haha! However I maintain my innocence and the students eventually relax.

Then I tell them we are going to play a coloring game. I split the students up into groups and assign each student one color. They are in charge of their color only on the color by number sheet. When they are done or when I say switch, they switch with someone in their group. I tell them the group with the most completed coloring sheets in the fastest time gets a piece of candy, but that never happens! :) As they start to color I start out calm and slowly tell them to switch faster and faster. I also "yell" at students to go faster and if they color outside the lines I "fire" them and rip up their coloring sheet! I also add new coloring sheets in as they are frantically trying to color.

Without fail, students absolutely freak out. They are so stressed and have no idea what is going on.

After about five minutes of the second coloring activity I stop and explain life Pre-Industrail Revolution. Most people worked on small farms making everything by hand or from a small shop. Things were really quality, but expensive and took a lot of time. People didn't have much and life wasn't great.

Then I talk about the factory system and how it changed life as we know it! It made things cheaper so people could afford more, created a middle class, etc. but it also had some drawbacks.

Students love this analogy and they love being in on "the secret" of the coloring activity until I can get through all of my classes.  

It's a great ice-breaker for the Industrial Revolution!