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8th grade · Social Studies · Unit 3 of 15

Immigrants & the Growing City

Ellis Island, tenements and Tammany Hall

What your child practices

Why people came to America around 1900, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, life in New York City's tenements, the five boroughs, bridges, subways and skyscrapers, and conflicts over immigration and city politics.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 8.2a; 8.2b; 8.2c · how industry and immigration made New York City and other cities grow, and the conflicts and corruption that followed

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. From the 1890s, millions of immigrants came through Ellis Island, and many lived in crowded tenements in New York City.
  2. Jacob Riis’s 1890 book How the Other Half Lives used photographs to show the hard lives of the poor.
  3. In 1898 five boroughs joined to form Greater New York City; its first subway opened in 1904. Tammany Hall was a powerful political machine.

Example: Which five areas joined in 1898 to form Greater New York City? They became the five boroughs. Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx are three. Queens and Staten Island are the other two. Answer: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island

Immigrants & the Growing City in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 3 of 15 in 8th grade Social Studies, after Industrial America and before Workers & Progressives.

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: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

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

    Thomas Nast helped bring down Boss Tweed with…

    • a new law
    • an army
    • a bank loan
    • political cartoons that showed his corruption

  2. Question 2

    Many immigrants left their homelands around 1900 to escape…

    • high wages
    • poverty, persecution and war
    • too much free land
    • an easy life

  3. Question 3

    The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in…

    • 1825
    • 1941
    • 1776
    • 1886

  4. Question 4

    Political machines often won immigrants' votes by…

    • giving jobs and help in exchange for votes
    • sending them home
    • charging them taxes
    • banning them from voting

  5. Question 5

    The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882…

    • built Ellis Island
    • made Chinese immigrants citizens
    • welcomed all Chinese immigrants
    • banned most Chinese laborers from immigrating

  6. Question 6

    By 1900, New York City had about…

    • 3,400 people
    • 3.4 million people
    • 340 million people
    • 34,000 people

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