Lesson Exemplar

Title: Cork 1700s-1850s Class: Fourth - Sixth

Objectives:
a) The child will be enabled to:
 

• Understand the development of ships since 1700s – from sails to steam to modern engines (or further back, depending on pictures available!)
• Critically examine a picture of a frigate from the eighteenth/early nineteenth century
• Read about the trade in Cork with the British Navy due to the Napoleonic Wars
• Determine which goods would be needed on a ship in the 1700s
• Read about social problems in Cork 1700-1850s
• Examine a picture to find out more about society in the early 1800s
• Respond to the information learned by creating a news report on the topic of "Rich and Poor in Cork 1814"

b) Resources
 

• Pictures of: Modern Cruise Ship, Steamship (e.g. Titanic), early steamship (c.1820), sail-ship from the 1700s/early 1800s (e.g. frigate on first slide of Section 3: Good and Bad Times). These should be stuck to blackboard not in chronological order. They must be covered e.g. with large sheet of paper.
• Computers for children to share or facility to project the website onto screen so all children can see it
• Copybooks or pages for children to write news reports

Introduction: "Fastest finger" game

• Explain that there are some pictures on the board underneath the large sheet of paper. They are labelled A, B, C and D.
• Explain that you will call two children to the board to have a competition. Each of them must put the pictures in order as fast as they can, starting with the earliest. (The two children should write the correct order of the letters on the board).
• Choose two children and tell them they can start when you say "go".
• Uncover the pictures and say, "go!"
• Allow the two children to write their chosen order up.
• Ask the other children to say whether they agree or disagree with the two children and why.
• Tell the children what the right answer is.
• Discuss the differences between the ships.

• Look at the ship picture in the first slide in Section 3 (either online or on a printout)
• Discuss the ship e.g. flags, absence of engines, what kind of supplies it might need.
• Allow the children try the online activity that immediately follows the picture.
• Either allow children to work on the rest of the unit online individually/in pairs, followed by discussion, e.g.what kind of clothes were worn in the ealry 1800s? What social problems were there? What was the difference in living conditions between someone who owned a factory and soemone who worked in a factory?
  OR
• go through the rest of the unit together, with teacher-led discussion about each slide.

• Further discuss the section just completed, asking children what they think a poor person would think about life in Cork in the 1700s and 1800s and what a rich person would think.
• Tell the children that they are to imagine there was television back in the early 1800s (nb. Television was invented in 1920s). They are to make up a television report about life in Cork in the early 1800s. It must include at least one interview with a rich person and one interview with a poor person.
• Question the children further, e.g. what famous person might you mention? What kinds of food should you mention? Etc.
• Divide children into groups of 4 or 5 to complete this task.
• View some of the reports they came up with.

• Tell the children they are to imagine they are a newspaper reporter from the early 1800s. They have interviewed some of the people in Cork about their lives. What would the rich people have said about life in Cork? What would poor people have said?
• They are to write an article for a newspaper describing what they have found out and their opinions on what should be done.
• Allow some of the children to read aloud their reports.

• Ask the children to write down three things they have learned in the lesson about the history of Cork.