Victorians: Child labour in textile factories

This lesson was the fifth in an intensive week's course on Victorian Britain for a Year 6 class. The children had not studied the Victorian era and had the usual difficulties of understanding what life was like for people during the period being discussed.

Wanting to incorporate ICT and to extend a relatively able group within the class, I chose the SPARTACUS website, which provides a very good child labour simulation. The information we used is in the section: Child Labour 1750-1900, listed on the site's home page. The children explored the resource material on the site, and followed hyperlinks to discover the information they wanted about the children in the Victorian textile factory.

Together we explored what life was like for workhouse children in a Victorian cotton mill in the early nineteenth century.

by Christine Williams, Sefton