The Birth of the Industrial Revolution

Teaching Ideas

Learning Objective: To understand the main factors in the creation of industrial Britain.

Success Criteria: • To consider the importance of cities.

• To prioritise the factors of the industrial revolution from most to least important.

• To explain personal views on the most important factor.

Context: This is the first lesson of the new topic on the industrial revolution of 1750-1900. This fits into the
National Curriculum topic of ‘Britain as the first industrial nation’.

The lesson introduces the six main factors that contributed to the Industrial Revolution which will be
investigated in detail in future lessons.

Starter
In pairs, students should discuss the importance of cities in the modern world and feed their ideas back to the class. Select pairs
to answer based on level of ability – start with lower-ability class members and build up your questioning to the higher.

Main Activities
What Was the Industrial Revolution?
Use the PowerPoint ‘The Birth of the Industrial Revolution’ to introduce the topic. You may wish to have students copy the key
words on this slide for future lessons.

Six Factors
The next section ‘Six Factors’ should be used with the Industrial Revolution Activity Sheet or Industrial Revolution Activity
Sheet Lower Ability to allow students to take notes on each factor and its importance.
Before completing the activity sheet, you may wish to print off the six slides that outline the factors and separate your students
into six groups. Give each group a slide and give them five minutes to read the information and come up with a freezeframe that
they can present to the class to teach them about their factor.
When all groups have presented their freezeframes and explained them to the class, give the students time to complete the
activities on the activity sheet.

The Perfect Recipe

With notes taken on the activity sheet, students should now put the factors into order of importance from 1-6. This will allow
them to digest the information and think about the factors from a personal level. Use the PowerPoint slide entitled ‘The Perfect
Recipe’ to sum up the six factors.

Students can then explain why they have chosen the order that they have in the space given at the bottom of the activity sheet.
 The Birth of the Industrial Revolution
Plenary
The Workshop of the World
Students should be given time to think about this phrase and why it would have been used. Using hands up, select students to
give their ideas.

Alternatively, you could give students sticky notes and get all students to write down a response and post on the board before
they exit the classroom.