Westward Expansion

This week we started our unit on Westward Expansion.  Over the next few weeks we will be studying the Industrial Revolution, Manifest Destiny, the role of immigrants and women, as well as how the Mexican & American War contributed to Westward Expansion.

We started the unit on Tuesday with a pre-assessment to see how much we already knew about Westward Expansion.  Then we watched a video about the Industrial Revolution which highlighted inventions such as the cotton gin, the spinning jenny, and the development of textile mills and factories. 

Industrial Revolution Video

On Wednesday we created our own communities.  At first our communities were neat and clean, each house had plenty of land surrounding it.  As time went on, and the factory system developed, we were forced to add more houses, more roads and eventually more factories.  Our neat communities became crowded, overpopulated and because of the factories, polluted.  This was a great demonstration of urbanization.

Here is a student example:

Look how close together the houses are!


Thursday and Friday we continued to study the Industrial Revolution, specifically the innovations that made it a Revolution, such as Interchangeable Parts, the Bessemer Steel Process, the Locomotive, Turnpikes and Steamships.  We completed a chart describing each innovation, how it contributed to the development of the United States and the region that it mostly benefited. In order to complete the chart we used our textbooks as well as ShowMe.  ShowMe is an ipad app that allows the teacher to create short lessons for the students to watch and listen to, each innovation had it's own ShowMe. 

The ShowMe's can be found on the CMMS SS Department Blog below.
CMMS SS Department Blog

Here is a copy of the Significant Innovations Chart:
Significant Innovations Chart


We will continue to study Westward Expansion next week with the idea of Manifest Destiny.

Have a good weekend!