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Child Labor Lesson Plan

by Renee DeLora and Michael Romano, Ramapo College.

Jane Addams was a champion of the anti-child labor movement. In order to learn about the realities of child labor and understand just how serious the fight against it was, this lesson utilizes resources from the Jane Addams Papers Project Digital Edition to allow students to analyze the sources and draw conclusions on their own. In this lesson plan, students will use their analysis of their assigned documents to create a poster that will later be used in a classroom gallery walk. Possible extensions of the lesson include group presentations or a classroom discussion. This lesson should take two periods to complete.

Purpose/Central Focus: To understand the role reformers had in changing child labor conditions

Standards:

  1. NJSLS Social Studies: 6.1.12.A.6.b: Evaluate the effectiveness of Progressive reforms in preventing unfair business practices and political corruption and in promoting social justice.
  2. NJSLS Social Studies: 6.1.12.A.6.a: Evaluate the ways in which women organized to promote government policies (i.e., abolition, women’s suffrage, and the temperance movement) designed to address injustice, inequality, workplace safety, and immorality. 
  3. NJSLS Social Studies: 6.2.12.D.3.b: Explain how industrialization and urbanization affected class structure, family life, the daily lives of men, women, and children, and the environment. 
  4. NJSLS Social Studies: 6.1.12.D.5.b: Evaluate how events led to the creation of labor and agricultural organizations that protect the rights of workers.
  5. NJCCCS Technology: 8.1.5.A.1: Select and use the appropriate digital tools and resources to accomplish a variety of tasks including solving problems. 

Student Objectives: 

  1. By viewing images of child labor and reading primary sources that discuss child labor, students will be able to identify at least three impacts that child labor had on children and American cities.
  2. After analyzing primary sources, students will be able to create a poster to showcase their analysis in a class gallery walk.

Key Vocabulary:

  1. Child Labor
  2. Progressive Party 
  3. National Child Labor Committee 
  4. Hull-House 
  5. Exploitation
  6. Suffrage

Prior Academic Knowledge:

Students will have to know about U.S. History during the lead up to the Progressive Era. Students will have to have base knowledge of how political policies are created or championed. Students should have prior experience working with primary and secondary sources.

Misconceptions:

  1. Women of the Progressive Era did not have the ability to voice their concerns about American society.
    • The women of the Progressive Era may not have had universal suffrage, but were able to vote in some local and state level elections countrywide. Even without the right to vote, women of this era were protesting and marching for a variety of causes. Women around the country formed clubs and organizations to unify their voice to make it heard in the fight for many social and political reforms.
  2. Women of the Progressive Era did not have any social power and were not responsible for policy reforms, outside of temperance and suffrage.
    • Due to the pressure on local and state governments from protests and marches held by woman’s clubs and organizations, women started to be heard in social and political reforms. The social power of women is why many were members of committees and government organizations that were tasked to handle reform policies, one of which was child labor reforms. 

Instructional Materials:

  1. iPad, Chromebook, etc. to access online resources
  2. Poster Paper
  3. Document Analysis (PDF), Poster Assignment (PDF) and Template (PDF), and Gallery Walk Documents (Google Doc - please make your own copy if you would like to make any changes) You can also access the PDF materials on Canva to edit them.
  4. Coloring/drawing instruments
  5. PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides (for presentation extension)

Procedures:

    1. Day 1 Procedures:
      1. Do Now: Begin by asking the class how their lives might be different if they had to work instead of going to school. What do they think life is/was like for children involved in child labor?
      2. Explain to the class that child labor was a major issue in the United States in the last century. Child labor was commonly accepted in American society, but a photographer named Lewis Hine was able to change the public opinion and show people the truth about the conditions of child labor. The following video from TIME Magazine displays many of the child labor photographs that Hine took over the course of two decades.
        1. TIME Video
        2. Suggestion: If your district has access to EdPuzzle, consider creating an EdPuzzle of the video.
          1. While watching the video, students should think about the conditions, the age, and the jobs that the children are working.
      3. Child labor was a social and economic issue and one of the best ways to learn about it is by reading first hand accounts.
      4. Divide the class into groups of four, assigning each group one of the following documents:
        1. Federal Children’s Bureau
        2. Who is to Blame for Child Labor?
        3. Stage Life
        4. Child Labor and Pauperism
        5. Progressives and Child Labor
        6. Child Labor and Other Dangers of Childhood
      5. In their groups, students should analyze the documents using the document analysis sheet. Students should also evaluate their document for at least three impacts that child labor has on children, families, or cities. 
        1. Students will use their analysis sheets during the next class to create a poster that represents the key ideas of their document. The posters will then be used in a gallery walk.
      6. Close: In order to ensure that students have stayed on task, close the lesson by asking them what the main argument of their document is and whether they think the author has done a good job of presenting that argument.
        1. Suggestion: Have students submit their answers on a Google Form.
  1. Day 2:
    1. The poster should contain at least one Lewis Hine photo from the Library of Congress website
    2. A thesis statement that addresses the key question “Evaluate how child labor affected children and the conditions of American cities during the Progressive Era.” 
    3. Three impacts of child labor
    4. Their analysis of the document
    5. An excerpt from their assigned document.
    1. Do Now: Each document that your groups have been working on is written by Jane Addams. Who is Jane Addams and why is she so involved in the anti-child labor movement?
    2. Students will spend day two creating their posters.
    3. Review the procedures for the poster assignment. 
    4. Alternative: Students could create their posters on a graphic design website like Canva or PosterMyWall.
    5. Close: Students should create one key question that they want students to answer while they view their poster the next day, during the gallery walk.
  2. Day 3:
    1. Do Now: Allow students time to put the finishing touches on their posters and hang them up around the classroom for the gallery walk.
    2. Students will complete the gallery walk and the accompanying worksheet on each document/poster and answer the key questions.
    3. Close: To wrap up this lesson, have a class discussion or have students write down the common themes that they noticed among the documents. Some common themes might be the role of women in the anti-child labor movement, the kinds of jobs that children worked, where they were working, etc.

Assessments:

  1. By viewing images of child labor and reading primary sources that discuss child labor, students will be able to identify at least three impacts that child labor had on children and American cities.
    1. Assessment: The final poster will display the impacts of child labor, in addition to their analysis worksheet.
    2. Assessment: Gallery walk worksheet
  2. After analyzing primary sources, students will be able to create a poster to showcase their analysis in a class gallery walk.
    1. Assessment: The final poster will showcase the students’ ability to analyze their assigned primary sources.

Suggested Extensions:

To extend this lesson, the documents and key question can be used to write a document-based essay. Additionally, students could do a presentation on their poster, by transforming it into a PowerPoint or Google Slide presentation, which would incorporate more technology and public speaking skills into the lesson.

Child Labor Lesson Plan