1. FALL 2014 Teacher Work Sample:
A Unit on Industrial Revolution for 11th grade U.S. History
Adam Frank Saxon
University of Central Florida
2. Contextual Factors
This unit was developed for an eleventh grade United States History class on seven class
scheduling at a high school in central Florida. The curriculum for the U.S. history course is designed
for students who perform at a level that is deemed an average grade level or lower in U.S. history.
The students who are enrolled in this class are mostly English language learners (ELL) with the
majority of the students being of Hispanic ethnicity. My supervising teacher teaches six classes, all
eleventh grade U.S. history, two classes are regular status with the majority being ELLs or needing
specific accommodations, and the other four classes are considered Honors U.S. history with the
majority of those students being a diverse mix of white, Hispanic, and black with little need for
accommodations.
The school serves about 3,140 students from a middle to upper class suburban area. The
majority ethnicity of the community is white, followed by Hispanic, black, Asian/pacific islander,
multiracial, and American Indian. Same goes for the school in terms of student ethnicity. There is a
white percentage of 44.1%, Hispanic percentage of 36.0%, black percentage of 10.6%, Asian/pacific
islander of 5.6%, multiracial percentage of 3.4%, and an American Indian percentage of 0.4%. I
have taken over the classroom for the duration of my internship, but for this specific work sample, I
will be including the materials I used to work with the two regular classes of United States History.
The first class has 16 students of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities. The second class, or third
period, is a larger class and holds 20 students with the majority of those students being of Hispanic
ethnicity and specific accommodations.
These classes have students who have unique needs that I must make accommodations for in
the classroom. One student is hard of hearing and so I sit that student close to me and I make sure
that I speak louder than I usually do during that class period. Another accommodation I use for not
3. just that student, but for the ESOL students and any 504s is printing out a guided notes sheet for
those specific students to follow along with a PowerPoint, in case I am going to fast and so I don’t
slow the class down for the other students who do not need the guided notes. The guided notes
proved to be successful right away. The classroom is set up in an unusual way when compared to
normal classroom set ups. The desks are arranged into three different sections, one facing the
windows, another facing the whiteboard (or the front of the classroom), and the other facing the
section that is facing the windows. This set up allows for discussion between the students and the
teacher because students can look at who is speaking instead of having to turn around in the usual
rows and columns set up. This can cause a problem with disruption, but rarely happens due to the
amount of discussion that occurs in the classroom. There is a whiteboard that has the Marzano scale
in plain view when you walk into the classroom and on the other side of the board there is a common
board set up with the essential question, learning goals and objectives, agenda, homework, and
assessments. There is also a projector in the classroom that I use all the time for PowerPoints,
videos, and interactive graphs and maps.
The way the desks are set up allow me to create an environment where everyone’s voices can
be heard and no discussion can be shut down. The desks allow for me to ask open ended questions to
spark discussion and because of the way the desks are set up, students can look at who is talking and
make it easier for them to say what is on their mind when it is their turn to talk and the classroom
can quickly turn into a debate room depending on the content of the debate. This could be a bad
thing in other classrooms but for my class of United States History, we can get deeper into issues in
order for students to have a better understanding of a concept. I use the projector almost every day
for note taking, videos, and interactive graphs and maps for students to get visually stimulated
content as well as audio content. I notice that students get more excited and involved in a lesson
4. when the projector is in use showing a video or PowerPoint. More questions are asked about the
content from the students when compared to me just standing at the front of the room and talking.
5. Learning Goals
The goals for this unit are based on the Sunshine State Standards for ninth through
twelfth grade that relate to the second Industrial Revolution in the United States. In order to support
the ELLs in the class, I will be using guided notes that each ELL receives and follows along with as
I go through a PowerPoint. The students are able to follow along at a good pace and their own pace
as well as being able to translate the guided notes in front of them instead of taking a lot of time to
write down words from the PowerPoint that they don’t even understand. Included in the PowerPoint
are specific visual aids such as maps, graphs, charts, and diagrams for the students to see the
information in a different way. For the students with specific needs such as hard of hearing, I turn up
the volume on any videos I show and I project my voice even more for the student.
The specific learning goals for this unit are as follows:
1. The student will be able to compare and contrast the first and second Industrial
Revolutions in the United States. (Sunshine State Standards: SS.912.A.3.3).
2. The student will be able to identify significant inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
(Sunshine State Standards: SS.912.A.3.5).
3. The student will be able to determine how the development of steel, oil, transportation,
communication, and business practices affected the United States economy. (Sunshine
State Standards: SS.912.A.3.4).
6. Assessment Plan
My supervising teacher uses quizzes at the end of each week to assess the students on
material they have studied throughout the week and the quizzes are counted as a grade. Each quiz
usually is short answer with about four to eight questions. I used these quizzes to assess the students
understanding of the material as well as using an exit slip every day for students before they left, I
would ask the class to say one thing they learned today, but the trick was that the students could not
repeat something else that another student had said. That helped me assess if they understood the
material of that day. Then there would be a quiz, as well as a bigger quiz at the end of the unit, as I
did with this unit. The pre- and post-assessment is the same quiz and I gave the pre-assessment
before I started to unit to see how much they knew already and I gave the post-assessment after the
unit to see how much they grew.
Class Meetings: Description of Assessment: Learning Goals Assessed:
Week before unit Pre-assessment (attached to TWS) all
Day 2 Introduction to Vocab activity all
Day 3 Concept Poster- Inventions 2
Day 4 Vertical/horizontal integration activity/Exit Slip 1, 3
Day 5 Jeopardy Review Game all
Day 6 Post-assessment (attached to TWS) all
In order to indicate a mastery level, students must get 80% on any of the activities or quizzes.
For the Jeopardy Game, I make sure that I group the ELLs with other students to integrate the
classroom and so there is no division between the Spanish speakers and the non-Spanish speakers. I
provide each group with a whiteboard to write their answers down with allows all students to get
involved because they all want to write on the whiteboard and they all want points so they discuss
more before putting their answer down. The ELLs within those groups are able to participate
because they can see clearly what is going on and they have a buddy who is helping them understand
7. what is being said and what is going on. I do not allow it often, but for certain occasions I let
students use google translate to help the students talk to each other. Also with the Jeopardy game, I
turn the volume up for the hard of hearing student and the game as a whole is just on big visual aid.
8. Design for Instruction
The pre-assessment showed me that these students understood some information about the
Industrial Revolution in regards to inventions and what resources were used during the Industrial
Revolution. Students had a tough time with the terminology of the Industrial Revolution that was
included in the test because they either never heard of the word before or did not know the meaning
of the word nor the concept. If students needed to know what a term meant that was part of the
question, they got it wrong. If there were any questions about businesses or laws or anything after
the Civil War, they got it wrong. Students were not able to answer the fill in the blank correctly
because those were all terms that they were not introduced to yet. Students guessed on the matching
because once they saw a word they did not know, they just gave up.
The results told me that I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time teaching about the inventions
of the Industrial Revolution because the students already knew a lot about inventions. The results
also told me that I really needed to teach the students the concepts of the Industrial Revolution and
cause and effect, the Civil War happened because of this then Reconstruction happened because of
the Civil War and so on. I also need to teach the terminology of the Industrial Revolution because
without the terminology and the correct knowledge about the vocabulary, the students will be lost
throughout the unit. After seeing the pre-assessment results, I will spend more time on the
vocabulary of the Industrial Revolution and the concepts that students need to know in order to
understand the causes, events, and consequences of the era.
The unit will follow the general timeline below. For more detail, I have attached my lesson
plans to this TWS.
Day 1: Unit Introduction – intro to vocab & KWL chart
9. Day 2: Technology and Industrial growth – discussion & concept poster for
inventions. Students make a poster on printer paper including one invention during
this era, and the 5 W’s (who invented it, what does it do, when was it invented, where
was it invented, why is it significant?)
Day 3: Rise of Big Business – PowerPoint on Rise of Big Business,
vertical/horizontal integration activity – students are in groups and make up their own
business to own and then list and explain how they would use horizontal and vertical
integration to grow their business.
Day 4: Jeopardy Review Game – review game in the format of Jeopardy, reviewing
all concepts, learning goals, and key vocabulary.
Day 5: Unit Post-assessment
10. Instructional Decision Making
Example One: The first example of a time that I had to adjust my instructional plan came
when I had started a PowerPoint for the Industrial Revolution and I noticed that some students were
on track and others were just sort of staring at me and at the PowerPoint slide with blank faces. I
realized that there were a lot of English Language Learners in my class and noticed that they were
the students with the blank faces. The way I planned the PowerPoint was clear in my head and
seemed simple to me, then I remembered that I speak English and those students do not speak
English very well or at all. So my supervising teacher and I decided to make guided notes for that
class every time we take notes. My supervising teacher and I do notebook checks every week to
check up on students note taking and if they keep their work in their notebooks and I noticed that
before the guided notes, there were a lot of missing notebook checks, but after the guided notes, the
notebook checks skyrocketed.
The blank faces of the students who needed the guided notes disappeared with them because
they were able to have those notes in front of them and they could go at their own pace and translate
whenever they needed to translate. Before the guided notes I was getting the feeling of my classroom
is going to be one of those boring history classes that everyone dreads because I’m going to be
lecturing and they are going to be taking notes. But that quickly changed with the guided notes
because even when I was done with the PowerPoint they could complete the notes on their own time
so I wouldn’t have to stay in front of the class the whole class period and open up more time for
activities to make my history class the class I want students to want to come to.
Example Two: The second time that I needed to adjust my plan came when I was teaching
students about horizontal and vertical integration. For this activity students were to get into groups
and think of their own business and then list and explain ways they use horizontal and vertical
11. integration in order to grow their business and create a monopoly. I allowed the students to group
themselves because they had behaved really well during notes. I quickly realized about five minutes
in after I had given the instructions that the groups were not working on what they were supposed to
be working on. Every group was grouped up with their friends so instead of talking about their
business and how to grow it, groups were talking about what they did the night before and what they
were doing for the upcoming weekend. I noticed this because I was monitoring and asking questions
about their businesses and when I came around no one could answer my questions and they had
nothing on their paper. At first the noise level was getting high, but I saw that as a good thing
because that meant students were talking to each other and engaging in discussion, but of course it
was the wrong discussion. So I decided to pull the class back together using my cue to get their
attention back to me (flicking the lights off).
I told them that I noticed they were not doing their work and that they were just talking to
each other so I grouped them myself. I had previously written down five different colors on little
pieces of paper for grouping and had each student choose one. Each student with the same color was
in a group and so that split up the friends and the students started to talk a lot again, but this time is
was about the activity. When I was monitoring the second time I noticed that the students were
engaged in the activity and were talking to students they never talked to before. I had that jigsaw
method in my back pocket just in case the class gets out of hand because I like to put my class into
groups a lot and discuss.
12. Analysis of Student Learning
The pre-assessment and post-assessment results definitely show that my students increased
their understanding of the Industrial Revolution as a whole. The graphs on the next pages show the
individual student scores on the pre-assessment and post-assessment for each student in the two
regular United States History classes in which I taught this unit. One graph shows the individual
student scores for all students, the next graph shows the pre/post-assessment averages for all
students, and the next two graphs show the individual student scores for each class. It is clear from
these graphs that every student improved their understanding on the Industrial Revolution, resulting
in a higher score on the post-assessment than the pre-assessment. Students gained anywhere from 2
to 56 percentage points on their assessment scores over the course of the unit. For the most part, the
students with the lowest pretest scores had the greatest gains because there was more room for them
to grow. The students with the highest pretest scores had the lowest gains because there was not a lot
of room to grow, but those who do grow scored perfectly on their post-assessment. Overall, the
results of these graphs show me that the students grasped onto the concepts and materials that were
presented to them and were able to retain information and concepts because of my instruction. The
results also tell me that the instruction was appropriate for students’ abilities and educational needs
such as the ELLs and the students who needed special accommodations.
15. The average score on the pre-assessment for all students wasn’t a failing grade, but it was
close to a failing grade and it was not close to the mastery level and showed that the students were
not ready to be tested on these learning goals the way that the EOC might test them on. The average
grade on the post-assessment was an 85% which is a good B. This showed that I was able to help my
students gain sufficient mastery of these learning goals that I was teaching them. Of the 37 students
who took the pre-assessment, 8 students received a mastery score of 80% or above while the rest of
the class scored well below that. Of the 37 students who took the post-assessment after I taught this
unit, 31 scored an 80% or higher, and only 3 students scored under 70%.
Of the 3 students who scored under 70%, two of them were ELLs who just moved to the
United States this year and were struggling with the translations. I would help those two students
more when it came to getting them the information because if they could just understand what they
were being taught they would be more than fine, but because of the language barrier it makes it
difficult. One way I would help those two ELLs would be to include more translation and more time
and opportunities for them to translate the information that they are receiving. Maybe make up an
activity where the class is using information, but it gives those two students more time to translate
the key information for themselves. The other did not complete most of the assignments due to a lot
of absences throughout this unit. I would address this problem of absences by providing rewards for
that student every time he/she arrives in class and on time, as well as on task. Rewards such as if you
are here every day this week I will give you an extra credit point or something along those lines so
that there is some incentive to come to class, but not reward too much so that the student is only
coming to class for the reward. I would stress that the reward for coming to class should be the
valuable information you received from class and so that the student can do well on their EOC in
order to pass the class.
16. I also analyzed the students’ pre-assessment and post-assessment averages by their student
group, such as ELLs, ESE, and regular education students. This showed that my ELL students made
an improvement of 21% and my ESE students made an improvement of 19%. My regular education
students made a 25% improvement. Overall, every group made gains and each group’s average was
82% or better on the post-assessment.
17. Evaluation and Reflection
Overall, I think that my unit was a success, especially when seeing the scores on a graph.
When I am up there teaching, sometimes I think everyone is getting the information and understands
everything that we’ve been talking about, but sometimes that is not true. Some students are just
looking at you to pass time, others are zoning out, and others are actually paying attention. I have
come to realize that I need to do the best I can do to get every single student involved in the lesson.
If the majority of students are on task, I need to figure out what I could do to get every single student
motivated. The minority of students who just refuse to do a lesson activity, I need to find their
motivation and help them along a path to get them engaged in an activity or lesson.
One of the reasons I love teaching is being able to have ideas pop into my head on the spot
right in the middle of the lesson and being able to change the lesson based on that idea and not
interrupting the flow of the lesson. Being able to change any aspect of a unit or lesson is such a key
characteristic of teaching because nothing goes as planned and there are always going to be
obstacles. Obstacles like ELL students and the way I was able to overcome that obstacle was with
my supervising teacher and I coming up with the guided notes idea to use for PowerPoint for the
ELL students. It did mean more work for me, but in the long run it will turn out to be worth it in the
end because those students who had those blank stares on their faces are now engaged in the notes
and have a better understanding and don’t have to feel rushed to get notes down. They can go at their
own pace and translate in their own language, but at the same time they are learning valuable
information about history and even learning more English.
I never really thought too much of pre-testing and post-testing together. I have always heard
of pretests and I have done them before but it never really occurred to me to use it as a way to assess
my students. But after doing this unit with a pre-assessment and post-assessment, I am definitely
18. going to use pre/post-assessments as much as possible to see where my students are at. Being able to
see what students know before you teach a unit and being able to see what students know after the
unit blows my mind and also boosts my confidence as a teacher, as well as making me a better
teacher because I know what worked and what didn’t so that I can change it next time. That is
another thing about teaching that I cannot get enough of. Being able to use trial and error on
activities and lessons and units in order to become a better teacher in the future. Everything I have
learned to do and what not to do in this one unit is changing how I will plan and implement lessons
in the future.
My best learning goal that students were most successful on was learning goal 2. My students
knew a lot beforehand about inventions but after this learning goal and the activity that went with it,
my students knew even more and could answer any question I threw at them in class. All of the
questions on the post-assessment that had something to do with inventors or inventions, the students
got correct. That feeling is the feeling that you get from teaching that I don’t think you can get from
any other profession. I always feel like I made a difference in a little way or a big way.
The learning goal that my students were least successful on was learning goal 3. Even though
my students scored great on this learning goal, I feel as if I could have done more for the students for
them to master that learning goal. On the post-assessment questions about learning goal 3, I realized
that those were the questions that most students got wrong. I have to get better at teaching students
the concepts that I want them to learn and finding ways to keep those concepts in their minds for the
future and for their tests and EOC. Students didn’t have a problem with steel, oil, and transportation,
but they did have trouble with the business practices that affected the economy. I need to adjust the
activity that I had them do in order for future students to grasp the concept better of those business
practices.
19. This work sample proved to me that I am in the right career. The work sample showed me
that I am good at teaching. Which makes me feel good about myself and boosts my confidence
which then makes me an even better teacher. This work sample also proved to me that the strategies
that I learned in college classes prepared me immensely for the classroom. I am able to stop and
adjust whenever I need to and I know what accommodations need to be made to meet students’
individual needs. The improvement shown by my ELL students proves to me that I can work around
the language barrier, which is a big deal for me because I want to be able to communicate and teach
every student I can, no matter where they come from. The improvement shown by my ELL and ESE
students shows me that they understood what I taught them and they understood what they can do
and what I can do. Not only the improvements from ESE and ELL students, but the improvements
from the regular education students as well shows me that I can help any student that needs help with
a certain concept or topic. This work sample has prepared me in a way that nothing else could
prepare me for teaching and for the future. This work sample has already helped me become a better
teacher and I will keep making work samples for the future to be the best teacher I can be and this
also showed me that there is always more work to be done to get students to succeed.
20. Second Industrial RevolutionPre-Test
Multiple Choice
Identify the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.
____ 1. Which of the following helped fuel economic growth by encouraging people to buy American goods?
A monopolies C protective tariffs
B patents D laissez-faire
____ 2. Steel changed people’s lives by making possible the
A invention of radio. C development of electricity.
B construction of skyscrapers. D establishment of time zones.
____ 3. Cartels, monopolies, trusts, and horizontal and vertical integration all share the goal of
A driving up costs. C increasing profits.
B raising wages. D combining resources.
____ 4. As farms became mechanized,
A immigrants bought more land.
B more people became farmers.
C farmers moved to urban areas.
D farm workers became rural entrepreneurs.
____ 5. The Sherman Antitrust Act imposed limitations upon which group?
A farmers C large corporations
B Congress D small-business owners
____ 6. Which labor leader began the American Federation of Labor?
A Samuel Gompers C Eugene V. Debs
B Terence V. Powderly D Uriah Smith Stephens
____ 7. What was one effect of the events in Haymarket Square?
A Americans turned away from radicalism.
B Employers gained powers over unions’ actions.
C Membership in unions generally increased.
D Strikes became more violent than they had been previously.
____ 8. In which system does one company control the businesses that make up all phases,or stages, of a product’s
development?
A horizontal integration C trust
B cartel D vertical integration
____ 9. Horizontal integration differs from vertical integration in that it
A combines different businesses involved in all phases of a product’s development.
B merges stocks from multiple businesses into a new organization.
C consolidates many firms involved in the same business into one giant company.
D requires investment from a number of people who share ownership in the firm.
____ 10. The federal government formed the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee
A labor union activity. C patent awards.
B interstate communications. D railroad operations across the nation.
____ 11. Which of the following limited membership to skilled craftspeople and focused on economic reforms?
21. A Knights of Labor C American Federation of Labor
B American Railway Union D Industrial Workers of the World
____ 12. Which event resulted in the execution of four anarchists and the decline of the Knights of Labor?
A Railroad Strikes of 1877 C Homestead Strike of 1892
B Haymarket Riot of 1886 D Pullman Strike of 1893
____ 13. In the late 1800s, industrial workers
A faced low wages and long hours in unsafe working conditions.
B took control of the factories in which they worked.
C collaborated with employers to reform labor laws.
D increased the amount of time they had available for recreation and leisure.
Completion
Complete each statement.
1. 14. ____________ was used to turn out large numbers of products quickyl and inexpensively.
15. A person who invests money in a business venture to make a profit is called a __________.
16. Companies used __________ to gain control or dominate an industry.
17. ___________ was an oil tycoon who used horizontal integration to decrease costs and increase profits.
18. A business in which ownership is shared is called a ___________.
19. These small, hot, dark, and dirty workshops called __________ wasan example of the horrible working
conditions for workers.
20. Wage cuts at a Carnegie Steel plant in 1892 led to the ___________.
21. The ___________ purified iron, resulting in a strong, lightweight steelwhich allowed for steelto be made
quickly and cheaply.
22. Workers from any trade were allowed to join the ______________.
23. Vertical integration was used by ______________,a steeltycoon, to increase profits.
Short Answer
1. Identify economic, political, and social changes that came as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution.
2. How did industrialization and new technology affect the economy and society?
3. How did the growth of railroad technology change American society? How did it change businesses?
4. How did the rise of labor unions shape relations among workers, big business, and government?
22. Second Industrial RevolutionPost-Test
Multiple Choice
Identify the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.
____ 1. Which of the following helped fuel economic growth by encouraging people to buy American goods?
A monopolies C protective tariffs
B patents D laissez-faire
____ 2. Steel changed people’s lives by making possible the
A invention of radio. C development of electricity.
B construction of skyscrapers. D establishment of time zones.
____ 3. Cartels, monopolies, trusts, and horizontal and vertical integration all share the goal of
A driving up costs. C increasing profits.
B raising wages. D combining resources.
____ 4. As farms became mechanized,
A immigrants bought more land.
B more people became farmers.
C farmers moved to urban areas.
D farm workers became rural entrepreneurs.
____ 5. The Sherman Antitrust Act imposed limitations upon which group?
A farmers C large corporations
B Congress D small-business owners
____ 6. Which labor leader began the American Federation of Labor?
A Samuel Gompers C Eugene V. Debs
B Terence V. Powderly D Uriah Smith Stephens
____ 7. What was one effect of the events in Haymarket Square?
A Americans turned away from radicalism.
B Employers gained powers over unions’ actions.
C Membership in unions generally increased.
D Strikes became more violent than they had been previously.
____ 8. In which system does one company control the businesses that make up all phases,or stages, of a product’s
development?
A horizontal integration C trust
B cartel D vertical integration
____ 9. Horizontal integration differs from vertical integration in that it
A combines different businesses involved in all phases of a product’s development.
B merges stocks from multiple businesses into a new organization.
C consolidates many firms involved in the same business into one giant company.
D requires investment from a number of people who share ownership in the firm.
____ 10. The federal government formed the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee
A labor union activity. C patent awards.
B interstate communications. D railroad operations across the nation.
____ 11. Which of the following limited membership to skilled craftspeople and focused on economic reforms?
23. A Knights of Labor C American Federation of Labor
B American Railway Union D Industrial Workers of the World
____ 12. Which event resulted in the execution of four anarchists and the decline of the Knights of Labor?
A Railroad Strikes of 1877 C Homestead Strike of 1892
B Haymarket Riot of 1886 D Pullman Strike of 1893
____ 13. In the late 1800s, industrial workers
A faced low wages and long hours in unsafe working conditions.
B took control of the factories in which they worked.
C collaborated with employers to reform labor laws.
D increased the amount of time they had available for recreation and leisure.
Completion
Complete each statement.
1. 14. ____________ was used to turn out large numbers of products quickyl and inexpensively.
15. A person who invests money in a business venture to make a profit is called a __________.
16. Companies used __________ to gain control or dominate an industry.
17. ___________ was an oil tycoon who used horizontal integration to decrease costs and increase profits.
18. A business in which ownership is shared is called a ___________.
19. These small, hot, dark, and dirty workshops called __________ wasan example of the horrible working
conditions for workers.
20. Wage cuts at a Carnegie Steel plant in 1892 led to the ___________.
21. The ___________ purified iron, resulting in a strong, lightweight steelwhich allowed for steelto be made
quickly and cheaply.
22. Workers from any trade were allowed to join the ______________.
23. Vertical integration was used by ______________,a steeltycoon, to increase profits.
Short Answer
1. Identify economic, political, and social changes that came as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution.
2. How did industrialization and new technology affect the economy and society?
3. How did the growth of railroad technology change American society? How did it change businesses?
4. How did the rise of labor unions shape relations among workers, big business, and government?
