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Indiana Industrial History Lessons for Grade 4

Gas flares burning above an Indiana glass factory yard at dusk

This page gathers Indiana industrial history lessons for elementary classrooms. Each one is a true-story lesson with a notes template, student work, and labs, built around a real place and time in the state's growth.

The lessons cover canal and railroad building, the natural gas boom that fueled glass factories, the steel mills of Gary, machine shops in Richmond, and wartime aircraft production in Evansville.

Teachers can assign a lesson as a reading with notes, work through the primary-source or judgment labs with the class, or send student files home; files are free with a school email.

  1. Library unit · 4th grade

    Immigrant Workers Build Booming Indiana

    Irish and German immigrants dig canals and lay railroads, linking Indiana farms to markets and growing cities.

  2. Library unit · 4th grade

    Indiana's Home Front and Battlefront in World War II

    Indiana factories build P-47 Thunderbolt planes in Evansville during World War II, then face postwar job losses.

    primary-source labjudgment lab

  3. Library unit · 4th grade

    The Great Migration to the Calumet Region

    Black families leave the Jim Crow South to work in Gary's steel mills and build lasting communities.

    primary-source lab

  4. Member-made · 4th grade

    Monroe Seiberling and the House the Gas Boom Built

    Natural gas discoveries fuel a glass-making boom in Kokomo led by businessman Monroe Seiberling, 1886-1891.

    judgment lab

  5. Member-made · 4th grade

    Richmond Builds the Machines That Move

    Richmond grows from an 1836 machine shop into a manufacturing city after railroads arrive.

    primary-source labjudgment lab

Every lesson comes with a notes template, student work and labs; student files are free with a school email.All topics