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8th grade · Social Studies · Unit 5 of 9

Factories & Reformers

Inventions, immigrants and reform

What your child practices

The Industrial Revolution in the North, canals, roads and railroads, immigration, public schools, and the abolition and women's rights movements before 1861.

Alaska content standards learning standard: SS.8.7.23.1; SS.8.7.23.3 · the reform movements of the 1800s and their effects

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. The North built factories and cities, like the Lowell mills, which hired many young women from farms.
  2. The South relied on plantation crops worked by enslaved people.
  3. Reformers acted: Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and guided many others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Example: Why did the North and South develop different economies? The North had rivers for mills and growing cities. The South had a long growing season for crops like cotton. Plantations there relied on enslaved labor. Answer: The North had more factories; the South relied on plantation crops.

Factories & Reformers in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 5 of 9 in 8th grade Social Studies, after Rights & Amendments and before Reconstruction.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Sojourner Truth was…

    • A railroad builder
    • A formerly enslaved woman who spoke for abolition and women's rights
    • A Confederate spy
    • A Supreme Court justice

  2. Question 2

    Dorothea Dix worked to improve care for…

    • Factory owners
    • People with mental illness and prisoners
    • Ships
    • Soldiers' horses

  3. Question 3

    Why did factory workers sometimes form unions?

    • To stop all work forever
    • To push for better pay, shorter hours and safer conditions
    • To own the factories
    • To leave the country

  4. Question 4

    Samuel Morse's telegraph (1844) let people…

    • Take photos
    • Fly
    • Drive cars
    • Send messages over wires almost instantly

  5. Question 5

    The Underground Railroad was…

    • A railroad company
    • A train under the Rockies
    • A subway
    • A secret network that helped enslaved people escape to freedom

  6. Question 6

    How did David Walker's Appeal (1829) differ from some other abolitionist writing?

    • It urged enslaved people to resist slavery themselves
    • It was written in Britain
    • It was about canals
    • It supported slavery

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