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Manufacture
Activities Teacher Notes
Suggested activities
relating to the cotton manufacturing and how cotton cloth was made at
the Yard Works in Preston?
Activity 1 – understanding how cotton cloth is made?
The obvious way to use this section and the cotton process game to encourage
pupils to fully understand the many processes involved in making cotton
cloth. As teachers we usually focus on the spinning and weaving, but as
this section shows there are many other processes involved.
Get your pupils
to save the cotton process diagram provided (to do this right mouse click on the image and select the 'Save Picture As' option, this will allow you to save the file to your computer. From here you can then import the image into another package for printing eg Word). Beside each box get
them to write ONE SENTENCE describing what was involved, or draw a simple
diagram explaining the process. All the information they need is in the
descriptions and photographs. It is also in the cotton process game. You
could split them into groups or pairs and each group/pair do one process,
and report back to the others, or produce a wall display or even a 'PowerPoint'
presentation if you are adventurous. Remember pupils can always 'Save,'
or 'Copy' and 'Paste' the photographs from the website into their work.
Activity 2 –
understanding where cotton comes from?
You could extend this activity with some map work. Get your pupils to
mark on a world map the countries the raw cotton comes from? They could
use an atlas, or 'Britannica' or 'Encarta', or other websites to find
out more about each country involved. This could be followed by the world
markets and/or trade centres games to see where Horrockses sold their
cloth.
Activity 3 –
understanding continuity and change in cotton manufacturing?
You can use the Manufacturing activity and the Timeline section to look
at continuity and change in the cotton industry. The Timeline Cotton section
has plenty of detail about the inventions that allowed cotton factories
to develop - the early machines are illustrated, and information on power
and the processes. Why not get pupils to research 'old' ways of making
cotton and 'new' ways, looking at things that stayed the same and things
that have changed? You could focus on one or two processes - spinning
and weaving for example, rather than the whole range of processes used
in Activity 1. For spinning the images in the Cotton Timeline of the spinning
wheel, the spinning machines and the image of the early mule spinners
would be useful here. The images of the factory spinners in the Manufacturing
activity would also be useful. The image of the handloom weaver (Events
timeline, 1808) and factory weavers in the how cotton cloth was made section
would be useful to compare changes in weaving.
Suggested activity
3 – the division of labour between men and women in a cotton factory.
You could use the photographs in the manufacturing activity to ask pupils
to explore the division of labour in a cotton factory. Pupils should find
out which processes were done by men and which by women? Are there any
reasons for this? See if pupils can spot any trends. Again, you could
use the information in the timeline and/or database to see if the pattern
was the same in early cotton factories.
Suggested activity
4 – child workers in cotton factories.
This activity uses the photograph for the weaving process titled 'Weaving
in an unknown Mill, early 1900's. Get your pupils to focus on one of the
'half-time' girls in the photograph. Ask them to produce a list of questions
they would like to ask her if they could - How old are you? Which do you
prefer, school or work? Is it noisy in the mill? How much do you earn?
What do you do? etc. Once they have produced a list you can collate their
suggestions into an agreed set of questions. Then, using the information
on the website, especially in the database and timeline, let your pupils
try to find the answer to the questions. Alternatively, you might find
the answers yourself and brief one of your pupils to be that person, and
get the rest of the class to interrogate her about her life. You could
even take on the role yourself if you felt none of your pupils were up
to it. Role-play can work extremely well in such circumstances. Pupils
can then write up the results in a variety of ways - a diary, an essay
and a newspaper interview for example. Many of the photographs on the
site could be used in a similar way.
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