The Great Depression

Many factors combined in the late 1920s and early 1930s to create the worst economic decline in America’s history. The A+ lessons should provide you with a good understanding of the background causes and immediate causes as well as the short and long-term effects of the Great Depression. If you don’t understand this background knowledge, the project will be more difficult. Ask your teacher for reading you can do to get this background if you aren’t confident you have it.

This assignment challenges you to use resources from the era of the Great Depression to gain a deeper understanding. You will not be learning how historians interpret and analyze past events — you’ll be doing the interpreting and analyzing for yourself.

There are three project options available to you; all of them deal with one part of the Great Depression experience: that of the Midwest farmer during the drought, or Dustbowl, and becoming migrant laborers in order to survive.

You will be using the website http://newdeal.feri.org. Please bookmark it now. Click on the link for "The Great Depression and the Arts."

You can choose to complete any of the first three choices:

  1. Documentary Film — "The Plow that Broke the Plains"
  2. Documenting the Migrant Experience
  3. Film Study of the Grapes of Wrath

As you complete the project of your choice, follow this procedure:

  1. Click on the title.
  2. Read through the information under "Lesson Plan." It is the first screen that loads after you click the title. You may want to take notes on the important background information mentioned in the reading.
  3. Next, click on "Documents." This area contains the primary source material you will need to read for the project. It may be helpful to print these readings so you can highlight them, comment in the margin, etc.
  4. Finally, click on "Handouts." These are the questions/writings you must complete in order to receive a grade for the project. Most of them are meant to be read BEFORE you examine the Documents and then answered as you read, or after.
    1. Please type your answers to the Handout questions.
    2. Please label and organize your answers so it is easy for us to see that you have completed all the work assigned.
    3. Use your best writing skills: complete sentences, proper spelling and punctuation, etc.
    4. Pay attention to the writing prompts so you will know when a list, a paragraph or even a short essay is being asked for.

 

Grading

The rubric below should help explain how your work will be evaluated for a grade. You are encouraged to use it to self-assess your work before it is submitted.

A

Not only are each of the Handout questions answered, the answers have been edited and revised to the point of having less than 5 mechanical errors throughout the writing. While the writing does reflect the voice of the student, it is clear that the student approached the Documents as an historian and made connections between the Documents and other historical knowledge. It is quite likely that the project also includes a creative cover page with photos, artwork or quotes from or about the era.

B

Each of the Handout questions is answered. The answers are well written and often include comments showing the student’s interest or opinion. It is clear the student examined the Documents through their "historian eyes." The overall organization of the project makes it easy to use.

C

All of the Handout questions are answered accurately. At times the answers seem to show genuine interest on the part of the student.