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4th grade · Social Studies · Unit 8 of 14

Oil, Wars & Inventors

Spindletop to the space age

What your child practices

Spindletop and Pattillo Higgins, how oil and gas made Texas industrial and urban, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II (Audie Murphy, Cleto Rodríguez, Bessie Coleman), and Texas inventors and scientists such as Gail Borden, Joseph Glidden, Michael DeBakey and Millie Hughes-Fulford.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 4.5(A); 4.5(B); 4.18(A); 4.18(B) · 20th-century events and people in Texas, the oil and gas industry, and Texas inventors, scientists and innovations

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Oil gushed at Spindletop in 1901 and made Texas more industrial and urban.
  2. Texans lived through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II.
  3. Texas inventions include barbed wire (Joseph Glidden), and aerospace brings jobs today.

Example: What happened at Spindletop in 1901? It is near Beaumont. A huge gusher of oil shot from the ground. Answer: a huge oil gusher was found

Oil, Wars & Inventors in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 8 of 14 in 4th grade Social Studies, after Cattle, Rails & the Frontier and before Regions of Texas.

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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    Industrialization means…

    • living in caves
    • riding horses everywhere
    • a change to making goods in factories
    • a change to farming by hand

  2. Question 2

    Gail Borden is known for…

    • leading the Alamo
    • inventing a way to make condensed milk
    • inventing barbed wire
    • discovering oil

  3. Question 3

    Michael DeBakey was a Houston doctor known for…

    • new ways to do heart surgery
    • inventing barbed wire
    • leading a cattle drive
    • discovering Spindletop

  4. Question 4

    A refinery is a factory that…

    • builds trains
    • turns crude oil into gasoline and other products
    • raises cattle
    • makes cloth

  5. Question 5

    Joseph Glidden is known for…

    • inventing condensed milk
    • flying to space
    • inventing a popular type of barbed wire
    • heart surgery

  6. Question 6

    Why did oil change the jobs Texans did?

    • All jobs moved to Mexico
    • Everyone became a cowboy
    • No one worked anymore
    • Many moved from farm work to work in oil fields, refineries and factories

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