US History · 11th Grade

Active learning ideas

Urban & Social Reforms

Urban and social reforms during the Progressive Era were born from direct experience with suffering, making this topic ideal for active learning. Students need to confront the human costs of industrialization to grasp why reformers took risks and why their work remains unfinished today.

• Common Core State Standards
• C3: D2.Civ.5.9-12
• C3: D2.His.14.9-12

• 30–50 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 3 activities

Activity 01

• Jigsaw
• 45 min · Small Groups

Jigsaw: Settlement House Programs

Divide students into expert groups, each assigned one Hull House program: English classes for immigrants, the Labor Museum, childcare, public health nursing, or civic advocacy. Each group reads a short primary source excerpt and prepares a two-minute explanation. Students regroup into mixed teams to build a complete picture of what settlement houses did, then discuss as a class: who was served, who was excluded, and why.

Analyze the goals and achievements of urban reformers like Jane Addams and the settlement house movement.

Facilitation Tip

During Jigsaw: Settlement House Programs, assign each group a specific reform area so they become experts in one piece of the puzzle before teaching others.

What to look for

Students will write a short paragraph comparing the goals of a settlement house like Hull House with the aims of a modern community center. They should identify one similarity and one key difference.

• Understand
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Relationship Skills
• Self-Management

Activity 02

• Gallery Walk
• 30 min · Pairs

Gallery Walk: 'How the Other Half Lives' Image Analysis

Post eight photographs from Jacob Riis' documentation of New York tenement life, each with a brief caption. Students rotate in pairs, recording what they observe (physical conditions, who is pictured, what is implied), what questions the image raises, and what reform response it might support. The debrief discusses both what the images reveal and what Riis' own perspective may have shaped.

Explain how Progressives addressed issues such as child labor, public health, and sanitation.

Facilitation Tip

For Gallery Walk: 'How the Other Half Lives' Image Analysis, group students heterogeneously so they challenge each other’s interpretations of the images.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'Were Progressive Era reforms ultimately successful in improving the lives of the urban poor?' Students should use specific examples of reforms and their limitations, including the issue of racial exclusion, to support their arguments.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Create
• Relationship Skills
• Social Awareness

Activity 03

• Role Play
• 50 min · Whole Class

Role Play: Municipal Health Commission Hearing

Students take roles as health commissioners, factory owners, settlement house workers, immigrant community members, and newspaper reporters at a fictional 1905 city council hearing on child labor and tenement conditions. Each role card includes one piece of evidence and one interest to protect. The hearing surfaces competing priorities and ends with a class vote on which reforms to recommend.

Evaluate the effectiveness of social welfare reforms in improving the lives of the urban poor.

Facilitation Tip

When running Role Play: Municipal Health Commission Hearing, assign roles in advance so students prepare arguments using evidence from the lesson.

What to look for

Present students with three short primary source excerpts: one describing tenement conditions, one from a settlement house worker's journal, and one detailing a new public health regulation. Ask students to identify which excerpt relates to which reform area and explain their reasoning.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Social Awareness
• Self-Awareness

A few notes on teaching this unit

Teachers approach this topic by centering the voices of the reformers and the communities they served, not the policies alone. Avoid framing reformers as purely heroic; instead, use their own words and actions to reveal their motivations. Research shows students retain more when they analyze primary sources in context and connect them to modern parallels.

Successful learning looks like students connecting evidence to arguments, recognizing complexity, and applying historical thinking beyond the textbook. They should move from describing problems to analyzing solutions and their limits, using primary sources and lived experiences as their foundation.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Jigsaw: Settlement House Programs, students may assume all reformers shared the same goals. Correction: Ask each jigsaw group to identify whose needs were prioritized in their assigned reform area and whose were overlooked, using Hull House’s records or settlement house reports.

  During Gallery Walk: 'How the Other Half Lives' Image Analysis, students often romanticize reformers as purely selfless. Correction: Have students annotate images for both evidence of suffering and signs of reformers’ assumptions about the poor, using Jacob Riis’s captions and Addams’s writings as counterpoints.

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Methods used in this brief

• Jigsaw
• Gallery Walk
• Role Play