All Aboard the Transcontinental Railroad!

The past few weeks we've been chugging along learning all about the transcontinental railroad. We began this by watching Charlie Brown explain its history on the Smartboard...

Next, we began using our transcontinental railroad lap books. Activities including making flip books about "The Big Four" who invested in the Central Pacific Railroad, creating a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad Companies, and creating a chart showing the impact of the railroad.

   

We read the books The Transcontinental Railroad by John Perritano and Coolies by Yin...

  

The first book describes the development and impact of the railroad. The latter tells the story of two Chinese brothers who worked on the Central Pacific Railroad and shows the discrimination Chinese laborers faced. We'll be creating Chinese story element lanterns when we complete the book.

Below is our transcontinental railroad bulletin board. Students pretended they were immigrant workers and wrote postcards to their families describing their experiences working on the railroad...

Our unit also included a class trip to Northlandz Train and Doll Museum. Below are some of the model trains we saw...

 Above is a replica of The Golden Spike Ceremony where the 2 trains making up the transcontinental railroad met.

Both units are available at my TPT store. Just click on the links below.

The Transcontinental Lapbook and Learning Activities

Coolies Reading Activities

    Happy learning!