Goals and Objectives
- Students will learn how Americans struggled to survive during the Great Depression and how the Depression affected men, women, and children. Students will analyze and empathize the hardships many Americans endured during the Great Depression.
- Students will understand the different steps the government took to combat the Great Depression. Students will differentiate and analyze how the Federal Reserve, Congress, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to help remedy the economic crisis during the Great Depression.
History-Social Science CA Content Standards
11.6 Students analyze the different explanations for the Great Depression and how the New Deal fundamentally changed the role of the federal government.
- 11.6.2 Understand the explanations of the principal causes of the Great Depression and the steps taken by the Federal Reserve, Congress, and Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the economic crisis.
- 11.6.3 Discuss the human toll of the Depression, natural disasters, and unwise agricultural practices and their effects on the depopulation of rural regions and on political movements of the left and right, with particular attention to the Dust Bowl refugees and their social and economic impacts in California.
CA Common Core State Standards
CCSS_H/SS_RH Grade 9-10
1- Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
4- Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.
1- Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
4- Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.
Lesson Introduction
The students will be instructed to read a direct quote from the textbook. The quote comes directly from a woman living in the city during the Great Depression, in which she describes the horrors of living in severe poverty during this time. The textbook quote: “I’ve lived in cities for many months, broke, without help, too timid to get it bread lines. I’ve known many women to live like this until they simply faint in the street….A woman will shut herself up in a room until it is taken away from her, and eat a cracker a day and be as quiet as a mouse…. [She] will go for weeks verging on starvation,….going through the streets ashamed, sitting in libraries, parks, going for days without speaking to a living soul, shut up in the terror of her own misery.” Students will be given about 5 minutes to read, analyze, and respond to the quote by writing down their thoughts and opinions about what they just read. Students will also be asked to identify specific words and sentences of the text that struck an emotional and empathetic cord the most.
Vocabulary
- Shantytown
- Soup kitchen
- Bread line
- Dust Bowl
- Direct relief
- Herbert Hoover
- Federal Home Loan Bank Act
- Reconstruction Finance Corporation
- Bonus Army
Content Delivery
Following the anticipatory set, the students will be instructed to open their textbooks to Chapter 14, Section 2: Hardship and Suffering During the Depression. The teacher will have the students conduct in a pre-reading exercise in which the students will skim through Section 2 of Chapter 14 and read the headings, sub-headings, and the first sentence of each paragraph. This will give the students a sense of what to expect when they begin reading the text; the teacher will also check for the students’ prior knowledge of the section topic by asking them pertinent questions related to the text. Students will then proceed to read the section.
Student Engagement
As the students read the section from the textbook, they will be organizing information into four sections (four-door activity). For three of the sections, the students will analyze how men, women, and children were affected during the Great Depression. In the fourth section, students will identify different actions taken by the government to assist men, women, and children struggling during the Great Depression.
Student Sample
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Lesson Closure
The students will be given the opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions through a whole-class reflective discussion. The students should exhibit an empathetic response to the reading, in which they will reflect upon the hardships men, women, and children endured during the Great Depression.
Assessments
Formative - As the students conduct their reading of the chapter section and complete the four-door activity, the teacher will circulate the room and assess the students' completion and understanding of the reading. The teacher may also engage individual or groups of students in an in-depth discussion about the text as the period progresses.
Summative - The teacher will assess and grade the four-door student activity (check for completion and understanding).
Summative - The teacher will assess and grade the four-door student activity (check for completion and understanding).
Accommodations for Students with Special Needs and English Learners
English learners will be provided with two hard copies of the vocabulary word bank with definitions (in English and in their primary language). EL students will also be provided a translated copy of text.
Lesson Resources
US History textbook