Industrial Revolution in Belfast

This is a investigative lesson where students conduct research on census records from the 1901 Irish census.
This is ideal as a local history project or as part of a unit on the Industrial Revolution. I use it for both.
As most of the Irish census records were destroyed in the Irish Civil War, we are limited to the 1901 or 1911 census records available at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/

This resource can easily take up an entire double class.

Students need a print out of the booklet in this resource.
A laptop or device for accessing the internet.

The lesson has a short video on 1901 in Belfast to introduce the topic.

There are four tasks in this booklet,

1. Students use clues to identify individuals in the census records around Northern Ireland.
2. Students answer questions about specific areas or households in the census records.
3. There is a short task aimed at identifying a famous person in the 1901 census.
4. Finally there is a task which uses one street in Belfast as a case study and students must investigate it to examine the social conditions in Belfast in 1901.

Finally as a plenary task students write a short paragraph discussing the social conditions in Belfast in 1901, they must use examples from the census to discuss the idea.

This resource also includes: A teacher’s booklet with answers to some of the questions.
There is also a simple explanation of how to search the census records.