The Assembly Line

If you have to teach Henry Ford and The American Industrial Revolution, this is a fun activity. I am sure a lot of you already do this but, if you don’t, here is a good overview. 
After students read Who Was Henry Ford, I set up my classroom like a factory. We start by having five rows of desks. Each row has four workers and a quality control inspector. Tell the students that, prior to Ford’s assembly line, it took a long time to build a vehicle. Once Ford developed the assembly line, where each employee had a specific job, the process moved faster – causing more cars to be built at a cheaper price. Since the class can’t build cars, our room is set up like the Hershey chocolate factory.
Before starting the assembly line, I love showing the students the famous I Love Lucy clip where Lucy and Ethel are working at the chocolate factory. The kids love it. 
After I show the clip, I stand on my desk and go into this long crazy story about how the Hershey factory closed down due to unforeseen circumstances and they need our help. It is important that we each do our job well so that Hershey Kisses can continue to be sold in stores. Each student eagerly agrees. Before they go to their stations, each student puts on a hairnet, gloves, and an apron. They are then assigned a job. One student cuts out the foil, one student places the Hershey flag on the foil, another student puts down the unwrapped Hershey Kiss, and the last student wraps it. At the end of the line is the quality control inspector. His/her job is to make sure the Kiss is completely covered and meets their expectations. 
The assembly line stops after one minute. Students count the number of quality approved kisses. They then meet to discuss how they can go quicker but with the same, or better, quality. After doing this three or four times, they have a system that works for them.
Once we finish on the assembly line, I then have each student do all the work by him/herself. By doing this, they can see how much longer it takes for one student to do all of the work rather than working as a team.
To end the activity, we do something fun. I bring in a treadmill (“borrowed” from the high school workout room) and have each team stand at one side. I then set the treadmill at the lowest setting. This moves the Kiss down the line so the students have to do their job without touching the kiss (just like an actual assembly line). Then we speed up the treadmill to see how fast they can do it. It’s quite funny!
I included a couple of pictures. Funny enough – when we were doing to assembly line activity, the local news came in to do a story on the class donating Halloween candy to the soldiers overseas. You can see the big pile of candy on the back table.