Growing Up in Coal Country

Vocabulary

Activities

Tier I Basic Words

Survive – to live

Mine – place in the ground where you find coal or other useful rocks 

Boss – person in charge at work    

Cave-in- ceiling of a tunnel falling in

Class- grouping of people according to how much money they have

Payday – day once or twice a month when the workers get their money

Corrupt – not following the rules

Widows – wives whose husbands have died

Chutes - slides

Prank - joke

Tier II Essential Words

Union – group of workers who join together to get better working conditions

Strike – when workers don’t go to work to fight for better working conditions

Immigrant – someone who has come from a different country

Child labor – children under the age of 14.

Pegboard – a board in the mine where you say where you are working

Chamber – area inside the tunnels of the mine

Superstitions – doing things the same way so they won’t be unlucky

Protest – to tell someone you don’t agree

Retaliated – fought back

Refuse (n) - garbage

Tier III Extended Words

Breaker - was a large noisy room where they coal was sorted by size and everything else taken out.

 Breaker boys - boys who sorted the coal in the breaker rooms.  They could be as young as 6 years old.

 Colliery - Coal mines and structures including the underground mines.

 Nippers - boys who waited by the mine doors to open them for the mules

 Spraggers - boys who put sticks into the wheels of the carts to slow them down and stop them.

Butty- man who worked with the miner.  He did all the shoveling of the coal into the cart and whatever else the miner asked of him.

Patch Village – towns that the coal companies owned where the miners lived

Culm banks – piles of the garbage rocks from the mines

Vocabulary Activities for Growing Up in Coal Country

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