What made St. Louis a City in the 1850’s?

What made St. Louis a City in the 1850’s?

Overview
This lesson will allow students to identify the qualities and components of a city in the 1850’s. With the technology and information on the Virtual City Web Site, the student will have an understanding of how a major city looked in 1850. Students will also have to utilize problem solving strategies and apply them to urban complications such as industrialization, population, urbanization, disease, and the removal of animal, industrial and human waste.

Objectives
After completing this lesson, students will:

Students will gain experience navigating the St. Louis Virtual City Web Site.
Students will identify what is a city.
Students will understand the concepts of urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth.
Students will analyze data and make conclusions regarding population through the use of charts on the site.
Students will apply problem-solving strategies to common urban dilemmas such as fire prevention; animal, industrial, and human waste removal.
Students will try to develop theories about what makes people move to, remain in, and return to a city.

Show Me Standards Social Studies 2,5,7 Goals: 1.4, 1.10, 2.1,3.1, 3.2, 3.6, 3.7, 4.2

Warm-Up

Students will journal 5-10 minutes about where they live. Students should also address if they plan on staying in St. Louis and why, if they know, their family came to St. Louis.
On the board, have students list what components must be in place for an area to be classified as a “city”. What is it based on? Industry, population, services, government, should all be included in this model for a city.
Separate students into two isolated groups. One group should look at a recent image of a major United States City and brainstorm what they know about this city. The second group should observe a photo of St. Louis and also brainstorm what they know about this city. When students have completed this short activity (10 minutes) the class should be brought together as a whole to create an oral or actual Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the two cities. Emphasis should be placed on the compare aspect of the Venn diagram illustrating what successful, growing cities have in common.

Process

Students will take a tour of the Virtual City model in 1850. While touring the virtual city, students will make a list of the characteristics St. Louis had developed by 1850 that qualified it as a major city.
Students will also look at the demographics on the 1850’s and 1950’s web site and develop a theory consistent with the data on the changes in population. Students should be asked to recreate the population figures on a bar graph putting the city information side by side to discuss possible theories of change.
Students should note the different type of businesses and buildings and make a class list of the different types of jobs available in the city in 1850. What buildings were used for government, industry, transportation, housing, penal, health or mental institutions, as well as noting buildings used for religious purposes or education.
Students will list the positive and negative aspects of living in a city like St. Louis in the 1850’s. Students will make these observations as they observe and do a walking tour of the virtual city.
In groups based on class size/computers, students will be given an index card with the following typical problems a city in 1850 would have created from their observations in the previous activity. Each group is responsible for research and a short oral presentation on this specific problem faced by a city like St. Louis. Possible raised topics could include:
Population, over crowding, death and disease, human, animal and industrial waste, fire, transportation and horse
Students with a partner will tour the virtual city and develop 10 questions about the 1850’s. Questions can be on any area of the city. These “quizzes” would be exchanged with other teams for a “contest”.
Students with a partner will tour the virtual city and will read the biographies of the people posted on the 1850 cite. As a team, students will be required to write an article in newspaper style format on one significant St. Louisan in 1850. Students will then role-play with their partner the article creating a mock interview with one student assuming the role of the journalist while the other student plays the historical figure for the class.