Social Studies — Grade 8

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity two

In this lesson, students will read and evaluate primary source letters from the Great Depression about the effects of the Fair Labor Standards Act on North Carolina's tobacco bag stringers.

Format: lesson plan (multiple pages)

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity six

In this activity for grades 7–12, students will read and evaluate primary source stories from the Federal Writer’s Project.

Format: lesson plan (multiple pages)

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity seven

In this activity for grades 7–12, students take on the role of legislators who must make a decision concerning the passage of an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Students will evaluate the impact of emotional appeal in persuasion. This activity builds on information learned in activities one through six.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 10–12 Social Studies)

By Pauline S. Johnson.

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity one

This activity for grades 7–12 will help students understand what tobacco bag stringing was and why it was important to communities in North Carolina and Virginia. Students will read and analyze an introductory article about tobacco bag stringing.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 10–12 Social Studies)

By Pauline S. Johnson.

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity four

In this activity for grades 7–12, students will examine primary source photographs and biographical information that were collected for the Virginia-Carolina Service Corporation to set up a data record.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 10–12 Social Studies)

By Pauline S. Johnson.

Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity five

In this activity for grades 7–12, students will evaluate primary source photographs from the tobacco bag stringing collection and some of Lewis Hine's photographs from the George Eastman House collection.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 11–12 Social Studies)

By Pauline S. Johnson.

Mountain dialect: Reading between the spoken lines

This lesson plan uses Chapter 13 of Our Southern Highlanders as a jumping-off point to help students achieve social studies and English language arts objectives while developing an appreciation of the uniqueness of regional speech patterns, the complexities of ethnographic encounter, and the need to interrogate primary sources carefully to identify potential biases and misinformation in them. Historical content includes American slavery, the turn-of-the-century, and the Great Depression.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts and Social Studies)

By Kathryn Walbert.

Industrialization and Progressive Reform in the Craft Revival

In this lesson plan, originally published on the Craft Revival website, students will analyze the process of making a hobby into a job. They will explore Craft Revival work environments, representations of industrial work environments, and data regarding Craft Revival work. To close the activity, students write a journal entry comparing Craft Revival and industrial work experiences.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 11–12 Social Studies)

By Patrick Velde.

The Craft Revival and economic change

In this lesson plan, originally published on the Craft Revival website, students will interpret photographs and artifacts as representations of western North Carolina’s economy at the turn of the century. They will also analyze historical census data and produce a visual web that will represent the changing nature of the economy of western North Carolina.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 and 11–12 Social Studies)

By Patrick Velde.

Children at Work: Exposing child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas

In this lesson, students will learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They will learn what life was like for a child worker and then write an investigative news report exposing the practice of child labor in the mills, using quotations from oral histories with former child mill workers and photographs of child laborers taken by social reform photographer Lewis Hine.

Format: lesson plan

By Dayna Durbin Gleaves.

Resources on the web

Webquest: Building an historic district

In this lesson for eighth grade social studies, students use historical overlay maps to create an historic district in Oxford, North Carolina. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 Social Studies)

Provided by: UNC Libraries

Population growth and movement in 19th century North Carolina

In this eighth grade social studies lesson, students compare historical maps of North Carolina from 1823 and 1892 and propose reasons for the population change evidenced by the maps. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 Social Studies)

Provided by: UNC Libraries

Child labor: Giving voice to the industrial revolution through monologues

Students gather information using selected websites and explore issues related to child labor, particularly as it occurred in England and the United States during the Industrial Revolution. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts and Social Studies)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE