Social Studies: A Train Tour Through New England

One of the stops on our train tour brought us to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Students participated in an activity where they got to experience what it might be like working in an assembly line for mass production as a candy wrapper. There were 3 people on their line: a cutter, a candy placer and a candy wrapper. For three minutes students worked in their lines to see how many candies they could wrap. Then students had to inspect their work for quality to make sure the candies were completely covered. It wasn't as easy as it first seemed.

After the activity, students were asked to think about what facial expression and adjectives they would use to describe how they were feeling if they had to do that job for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Some students said they would be happy because they would be earning money. Others thought they would be tired, bored, frustrated and sore. They also thought about pros and cons to having a machine do the job of wrapping the candies. Some of the pros were the job would get done faster and they wouldn't be as tired. Some of the cons were the machines cost a lot of money, people would loose their jobs, machines could break down and cause pollution.