Dive into the Gilded Age with a hands-on simulation where students represent industries like railroads, steel, and oil.
What’s Covered
They’ll compete to sell products for the most profit, making ethical decisions. As regulations are introduced, they’ll adapt their strategies, learning about monopolies and trusts. To make it more interactive, students can play a life-size version of Catan, experiencing the competition and strategy of big business on a grand scale.
Educational Standards
Applicable Standards:
- SS 4.2: Students describe the social, political, cultural, and economic life and interactions among people of California from the pre-Columbian societies to the Spanish mission and Mexican rancho periods.
- 4.2.1: Discuss the major nations of California Indians, including their geographic distribution, economic activities, legends, and religious beliefs; and describe how they depended on, adapted to, and modified the physical environment by cultivation of land and use of sea resources.
- SS 4.4: Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power, tracing the transformation of the California economy and its political and cultural development since the 1850s. Describe rapid American immigration, internal migration, settlement, and the growth of towns and cities (e.g., Los Angeles).
- SS 5.2: Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas. Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas.
- SS 5.3: Students describe the cooperation and conflict that existed among the American Indians and between the Indian nations and the new settlers.
- 5.3.1: Describe the competition among the English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Indian nations for control of North America.
- SS 5.8: Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the role of economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and transportation systems.
- SS 6.2: Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Kush.
- 6.2.3: Understand the relationship between religion and the social and political order in Mesopotamia and Egypt
- SS 8.12: Students analyze the transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions in the United States in response to the Industrial Revolution.
- SS 8.8: Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
- SS 10.4: Students analyze patterns of global change in the era of New Imperialism in at least two of the following regions or countries: Africa, Southeast Asia, China, India, Latin America, and the Philippines.
- SS 11.2: Students analyze the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.