Lesson Plan #: CC-0068

Lesson 4: Great Inventors Settlers?


Objectives: The student will be able to:

1. identify several prominent inventors of the late nineteenth century and describe what they invented.

2. explain the importance of inventions to the rise of industry and the changing ways of life in the United States.


Description of lesson/activities:

1. The teacher may wish to approach this topic as a whole class instruction or as a research project. See below for both possibilities.

2. A whole class activity should center around the life and inventions of Thomas Alva Edison. Many accessible biographies on this famous inventor are in print. Students should read about the incandescent electric light bulb, the phonograph, and other Edison inventions and patents. As a culminating activity, students should write a description of what life might be like without these inventions.

3. A research activity should cover more of the famous inventors of the period, including Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers. Oral reports, posters, or other displays of inventions could be culminating activities for this research.

4. The teacher may also wish to describe less well known inventors of the period. Students may find resources such as _African-American Inventors_, by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, and _Black Pioneers of Science and Invention_, by Louis Haber, appropriate sources of information.