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Curricular Materials
In addition to hosting field trips and offering professional development opportunities that support STEM education, Seashore Trolley Museum provides teachers with an array of online teaching resources that promote the integration of STEM education with the teaching of social studies and language arts.
To compliment the curricular materials provided here, Seashore Trolley Museum recommends the An Alarming Idea: Designing Alarm Circuits and The Attraction is Obvious: Designing Maglev (Train) Systems lesson plans from our partners, the Engineering is Elementary Program at the Boston Museum of Science
History in Motion:
Discovering History and Science through Public Transportation
Unit Description and Background
History in Motion is a unit of three lesson plans for third to seventh graders promoting the integration of U.S. History and Science with Language Arts.
This History in Motion curriculum is designed to help students discover history and science through their exploration of public transportation systems in the past, present, and future, with a focus upon Maine. Following the guidance of the Maine Department of Education, History in Motion targets the 2007 Maine Learning Results Performance Indicators and the award-winning pedagogical standards set by the National Center for Technological Literacy based at the Boston Museum of Science. The research upon which this unit is based, stemmed from development of the exhibit History in Motion: Public Transportation Connecting Maine Communities which opened at Seashore Trolley Museum in September, 2009.
Unit Outline
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Unit Objectives
Essential Understandings:
Public transportation has been a vital part of the social structure of the United States for most of our nation’s history
Transportation strategies and technologies overcome geographic obstacles and enable communities and cultural groups to connect with one another, enabling economic growth and sometimes cultural conflict
Industrialization, in general, and the invention of electric railways, buses, and automobiles, in particular, changed the diversity of Maine and the social mobility of its population
Natural resources, such as rivers, coal, and timber, were used to power trolleys and factories with steam power and electricity.
Essential Questions:
What types of public transportation have existed in Maine history?
How do electric railways differ from railroads?
Who used electric railways and why?
How and why were buses invented?
How did diverse cultural groups use, or were prevented from using, public transportation in Maine and beyond?
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Bridging Documents |
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Children's Books |
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Instructional Online Image Resources: Maine Memory Network |
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Audio-Visual Resources |
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Other Curricular Materials Online |
Funding for the development this material was provided by...
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