Great+Depression

**Great Depression** toc = = =The Great Depression=

Comprehensive Materials
1) McDougal Littell, Inc (2007). //The Americans: Reconstruction to the 21st Century, Teacher’s Edition.// Houghton Mifflin Company. [TEXTBOOK/TEACHER RESOURCE]


 * Great Depression and New Deal Unit: Chapters 14 and 15—pg. 462-522
 * High school reading level
 * Chapters cover causes of the Depression, hardship and suffering, Hoover’s role, the New Deal and its critics, focus on how the New Deal affects different sectors of society, culture in the 1930s, and impact of the new deal. Chapters include quotations, focuses on “key players”, images, political cartoons, and short assessments
 * Teacher’s edition is aligned with pages of students’ textbook and provides additional resources such as lesson plan pacing, lesson objectives, activity suggestions, skill-building lessons, ideas for differentiation.
 * Textbook is great for reading as homework accompanied with guided reading questions. Also allows students to have personal copies of images that teacher might show in class
 * All students or teachers may benefit from this. Great for visual learners—littered with charts, images, and organizers. Textbook includes audiovisual materials such as recordings, “Voices of the Past”, good for auditory learners.

2) Goff, Brent. (2008) //History Alive! Pursuing American Ideals.// Teacher’s Curriculum Institute. [TEXTBOOK/TEACHER RESOURCE]

Photo library divided into topics such as: Art, Civilian Conservation Corps, Education, Tennessee Value Authority, and film. Each image includes bibliographic information as well as a short caption. High quality images.
 * 892 pages complete, includes unit on The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression
 * Resources include a student edition (high school level) with readings/activities/worksheets, lesson guides, transparencies, CDs with recordings (e.g. FDR’s fireside chats)
 * Covers same material as textbook above but provides much more guidance for teacher on how to link lessons to essential questions and issues that have relevance to today
 * In my own unit plan used: succinct reading on President Hoover, simulation-activity—being economic advisors to Hoover, graphic organizers and images on New Deal programs, Graphing Economic Data on the Great Depression and guiding questions.
 * All teachers and students could benefit from this resource. Activities and lesson plans are conscious of meeting many learning styles.
 * Over 5000 Great Depression era images from the National Archives, the FDR Library and many other sources.
 * Resource covers the experience of everyday Americans, New Deal policies and Programs, culture in the 1930s
 * Can use these images for overhead transparencies/powerpoints to describe the era as well as in visual literacy activities
 * Visual learners and interpersonal learners will benefit from images and getting insight into individuals’ lives
 * New York Times articles and lesson plans for middle and high school students
 * Primary sources—more difficult to understand economic/financial information but contemporary articles provide accessible summaries of the Crash
 * Students use New York Times articles covering the stock market collapse in 1929 to analyze the reported causes of this stock market collapse, reactions on many levels to the collapse, and speculated short-term and long-term effects of the collapse. Includes analyzing articles from 1929.
 * In my own unit I have used the articles to create a scavenger hunt worksheet for students to define key terms and understand why the Crash occurred. Could divide them in groups to read articles from different days of October 1929 and then write first-person narratives from perspective of investors.
 * Great for verbal and visual learners; students interested in journalism or current affairs.

5) “Teaching a Stock Market Simulation.” Visit[| Passion Flower Side Effects] [SIMULATION/EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING WEBSITE]


 * Website includes full lessons and materials for teaching stock market simulation; requires no prior knowledge. Appropriate for middle and high school students. NB: this simulation requires at least 1 week of lessons.
 * Goal of simulation is to learn and understand basic investing principles, current events, the basics of how the economy works, money management skills, basic math, reading comprehension and writing skills. Differs from typical stock market simulations in that the simulation is not a “contest” to discourage poor investment decisions such as taking large risks.
 * For my own purposes I might condense the lessons to create a mini-simulation that allows students to grasp the basics rather than playing it out until each individual is left with a sum of money. If played out in full may make presentations on what students learned and the results of their investments.
 * Great for students interested in current events and demonstrating business savvy. Logical/mathematical learners will benefit; can be modified for kinaesthetic learners so that students have to move to different areas of the room for buying/selling.

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 * 525 word article, middle school and high school level
 * Article describes 14-year old stock market investors, defines stocks, shares, Dow Jones Industrial Average. Can provide a hook for students who may be interested in adolescent making money this way.
 * Students can create flow charts of what happens to a person’s money when they invest in the stock market; students could research data on Dow Jones and graph; students could write short paragraphs about how interest in the stock market reflects the state of the economy
 * May benefit logical/mathematical learner


 * 464 pages, high-school—adult reading level
 * Novel published in 1939. Set during the Great Depression and traces migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and the hardships they endure as migrant farm workers. Styles alternatives between narrative on the Joad family’s life and poetic prose interludes.
 * Provides students context of the Great Depression and allows them to connect macroeconomic factors to the life of a particular family. Particularly captures the Dust Bowl.
 * In my own unit I use excerpts from chapters 1 and 5 with reading questions as a primer to the unit to get students oriented to the feel of the era (over February break). Alternatives: have students read entire book and weave in to unit noting how family’s life was changed by events of Depression; write a play based on the book

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 * Middle-school or high school level resources, student-friendly website
 * Website provides basic information on how the Great Depression affected children, primary sources—letters written by children and adolescents to Eleanor Roosevelt, information on Eleanor Roosevelt’s participation in various New Deal programs, essay by ER called “Facing the Problems of Youth” and student responses
 * Resource includes lesson plans with potential activities: have students analyze letters in groups asking whether writing letters is an effective resolution to a problem, evaluating ER’s efforts; students could take on role of one letter-writer and in future lessons describe how different aspects of the Depression affected them; drawing comparisons to youth in modern times
 * Interpersonal and intrapersonal learners might particularly benefit as well as visual learners who can look at images of youth in the Depression
 * Particularly effective for verbal, intrapersonal, and interpersonal learners who are able to take perspective of characters. Book also available on CD for auditory learners.
 * 471 pages, adult-reading level but text can be excerpted for students
 * Textual portraits and photographic records of three sharecropper families in the South. There are poems, bits of dialogue, prose as well as 64 photos of sharecroppers. The form of the book itself is experimental. Speaks to the struggle of tenant farmers to survive and maintain dignity during the Depression. Great for developing visual literacy
 * This resource is most easily used for Evans’ photos which can be used on transparencies in class and for photo IDs on assessments. Students can be encouraged to take perspective of an individual in the photos. Students could also learn how to write photo essays that depict everyday life for farmers
 * Visual, interpersonal, and intrapersonal learners will benefit from this source as well as students who are interested in literature


 * 480 pages, high school reading level
 * Originally published in 1970, includes dozens of interviews that span the socioeconomic spectrum from ordinary people to public officials who lived during the Great Depression. He asks people how they managed financially and personally during slump. He is particularly interested in exploring their perspective on national issues and society’s values. Notably includes accounts by congressmen C. Wright Patman and Hamilton Fish, as well as failed presidential candidate Alf M. Landon, who recalls what it was like to be governor of Kansas in 1933
 * Can be used in my unit as homework or to help students adopt a role—a person whose perspective they could adopt.
 * Great for interpersonal learners; could be extended for audio learners if recordings are included (can be found on www.studsterkel.org/htimes.php)
 * 60 minutes
 * 1931-1939, includes themes the Dust Bowl, farming techniques and environmental impact, soil conservation, the Depression and the New Deal. Video is a series of interviews with Dust Bowlers.
 * Offers a contrast/supplement to Grapes of Wrath where family fled to California; these interviewees stayed and lived through different types of disasters
 * Lesson could open with geographic exploration of the Dust Bowl region. Many quotations from interviewees that students can analyze to determine whether they would have stayed or migrated. Guided viewing questions.
 * Ideal for visual and auditory learners.
 * Over 160,000 color and black and white photos. Not as student-friendly but thorough
 * Includes biographies of photographers and descriptions of their work with New Deal programs. Includes photos by Dorothea Lange (with highlight of “Migrant Mother”, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein and others
 * Could be used for photograph analysis exercises, understanding experiences of Americans, learning to develop photo essays
 * Good for visual learners

13) Thomas, Jesse O. “Will the New Deal be a Square Deal for the Negro?” (1933) //Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life//. On · An African American journal, Opportunity, examines New Deal policies and calls for fair treatment for blacks. Students examine effects of New Deal on different members of society—allows them to see multiple perspectives. · Students could answer guided reading questions/analyze the source as well as use to answer question on summative assessment about the experience of African-Americans during Depression. Students could write a letter to FDR detailing how the New Deal needs should be altered to be more inclusive.

FDR and Evaluating the New Deal

 * Website includes 13 audio clips of FDR’s speeches including inaugural addresses and fireside chats from 1933-1938
 * Site includes a blurb that connects Depression to current (2008) financial crisis through following questions: What might FDR say in a fireside chat during the financial crisis of 2008? Speeches are divided into topics including: bank failures, New Deal, Recovery Progress, Works Progress Administration, Dangers of Individualism, Saving the Farms, and Immigrants
 * In my own unit will use in FDR overview lecture to establish FDR’s perspective as a liberal and vision of the New Deal. Could also use as an audio exercise in which students respond to questions
 * Auditory learners will benefit from these recordings. For all students, could provide transcript of speeches to follow along
 * 256 pages, adult reading level. Chapter 2 of particular interest
 * Katznelson argues that affirmative action did not develop out of the Civil Rights movement but originates in the New Deal policies. Rather than benefiting minorities, policies of the 1930s-1950s explicitly supported racial hierarchy. Katznelson shows that southern Democrats tailored federal legislation like the GI Bill and Social Security Act to ensure that blacks would be excluded from provisions of legislation and that they would most benefit working-class whites. Similarly, Katznelson makes a case that the 1939 Fair Labor Standards Act did nothing for employment sectors dominated by blacks at the time.
 * Research material for teachers or enrichment material or students with advanced reading level. Teacher can weave this information into discussion of the legacy of New Deal policies. Can be included in lesson on seeing the Great Depression from the perspective of African-Americans. Offers alternative, oft-ignored critique of the New Deal. Could use selected sentence or paragraph for discussion.

Culture in the 1930s
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 * website documents popular culture in the 1930s through timelines, information pages that connect genre of film (for example) to feeling of the era. Includes topics such as gangster films, documentary film, images of mammies, comics, advertising, works of architecture, radio serials, etc.
 * Teacher can use for own lectures/demonstrations, student scavenger hunts, research projects on aspects of culture in the 1930s
 * Great for all teachers and learners. Wide spectrum of multimedia materials including readings, recordings, images virtual museums.
 * Website explores the evolution of traditional rural music into the commercial genre of Country and Western in the context of the Depression. Highlights the music’s appeal in a time of hardship
 * Includes student-friendly info pages with images and songs. Students look at primary sources and understand how popular culture connects to social realities
 * Could be used as part of a research project on culture in the 1930s or could use music of Woody Guthrie to play in class and analyze lyrics