...When I first learned to doff bobbins
I thought it play
But when you do the same thing twenty times-
A hundred times a day-
It is so dull!
Students will understand different aspects of life and work among the young women who worked in textile factories in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the 1830s and 1840s
Students will understand how to analyze and gather evidence from different types of primary sources
This activity aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.6. Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose.
RHSS.6-8.1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
WHSS.6-8.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
Step 1. Hand out the cover illustration from The Lowell Offering. Ask students to complete the Lessons in Looking: The Lowell Offering Worksheet.
Step 2. After students have completed the worksheet, discuss the image from The Lowell Offering.
What was The Lowell Offering?
What are some of the details you see in the picture? What do they stand for or represent?
What do you think was the artist’s point of view about what it was like to work in the Lowell textile factories? Positive or negative?
Step 3. Hand out the Farm vs. Factory: Constructing a Paragraph Worksheet. Working in groups, students should arrange the sentences provided into a paragraph that interprets the meaning of the Lowell Offering picture. They can cut out the sentences provided and paste them into the correct order (Claim/Counterclaim, three details, Conclusion/Summary), or they can use the oversized sentences and move around the people holding them into the correct order, or they can paste the oversized sentences in order on the board or large sheets of butcher paper.
After students have finished putting the sentences in order, review an example or two as a group. Students will probably have put the supporting details in different orders, which is fine. Ask students to explain how they decided which sentence was Claim/Counterclaim and which sentence was Conclusion/Summary.
Step 4. Explain to students that now they will get to see evidence for a more negative view of factory life. Hand out A Mill Girl Explains Why She is Leaving Factory Life, A Former Mill Girl Remembers the Lowell Strike of 1836, and Farm vs. Factory: Finding and Citing Evidence Worksheet. Working individually or in small groups, students should read the two documents and fill in the Finding Evidence portion of the worksheet.
Briefly discuss the evidence they found for why Sarah Rice and Harriet Robinson had a negative view of working in the textile factories.
Step 5. Now students will write their own paragraph interpreting the evidence from Sarah Rice and Harriet Robinson. Have students complete the Citing Evidence and Writing a Paragraph sections of the worksheet.
This worksheet aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
This worksheet aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
WHSS.6-8.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
This worksheet aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.6. Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose.
Oh! Isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I -
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave
For I am so fond of liberty,
That I cannot be a slave.