The Great Depression Inquiry Unit Project

Grade 5

I. UNIT TOPIC and STRATEGY BACKGROUND

A. The Great Depression

Causes and Results of Depression
Ways of Life During the Depression
The Role of Government in Economic Recovery

B. Background information on unit topic and perspectives from school, students, community, teachers, other non-academic sources

I spoke to one of the fifth grade social studies teachers about teaching students about the Great Depression. She said she would love to teach it and has so many wonderful ideas she could use. However, the Great Depression is one of the last topics discussed in their textbook and they rarely ever get that far. She really hasn’t ever had much of an opportunity to teach the Great Depression to the students. She said if there was ever a time that they were to get that far she would like to bring in speakers such as her relatives and have them speak to the students. She said she would also try to find people in the community that would like to come in and speak to the students. She would let the students ask them questions they may have, as well. She also said she may look for movies or books that address this topic and use those to help address the topic.

When asking the 5th grade teachers at another school about the topic of the Great Depression, I was surprised to hear that it is not taught in the curriculum. My cooperating teacher said that the curriculum for 5th graders is to get from chapter 1 through chapter 20 by the end of the year. This spans a major part of history, starting with prehistoric times and ending with the Civil War. My cooperating teacher said that she has never taught the Great Depression before because they never get that far during the year in social studies. Looking for more information, I went to a different 5th grade teacher who transferred here a couple of years ago. This teacher told me that at her old school she had taught the Great Depression, and she thought it was an interesting topic to teach. She enjoyed teaching this topic because she felt it was easy to involve the students by having them interview someone who lived during the time. This teacher also said that she would invite her father to come in and talk to the students about his experience during the Great Depression. She said that the students loved this because it was something different than simply reading from a textbook. She also said that there are many great resources available to teachers related to the Great Depression such as books, journals, and videos.

C. Background information on unit topic and perspectives from academic readings

Usually when studying the Great Depression, the main concepts that are discussed is the Great Crash of 1929, how hard it was to find work and food, and Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. As Takaki (1993) points out, there are a few people that tend to be overlooked in during this time period. While everybody in the country suffered from the depression, African Americans fell into deeper poverty then they had already been in (p. 366). The price of cotton dropped and while some blacks thought to go to the city for jobs, they only met angry white who were determined to be employed before any black man. The unemployment rate for African Americans was from 30 to 60 percent higher than the white unemployment rate in any given city (Takaki, 1993, p. 367). W. E. B. DuBois even suggested that blacks “voluntary segregate” themselves in order to survive the depression (Takaki, 1993, p. 368). While the New Deal was known to help people during the depression, at first its programs discriminated against race, until the policymakers need the black vote for election time.

Similar to African Americans, Chicanos were devastated by the depression and were hit harder than the average white person. Since there were such high rates of unemployment, white people took out their aggression on people of other races. Mexicans were sent back to Mexico, even children who were born in the U.S. and were legally citizens were shipped back to Mexico to help deal with the surplus of people and limited jobs (Takaki, 1993, p. 334).

One issue that is not often addressed, but Zinn (1997) points out is that the Great Crash and the Great Depression were unavoidable. Since the main drive of the country was corporate profit, the system was unaware of human needs (p. 281). After all, about a third of all the income in the U.S. was in the hands of the top five percent of the population. Wealth was very unequally distributed and would throw the people into a depression. Once again, Zinn is also one to recognize that blacks were initially barely helped by the New Deal.

While the Great Depression hit everyone in the country hard, some were hit harder than others. The average white man and what he had to struggle through is often disclosed in the classroom, but the effect that the depression had on minorities is usually not discussed or the difference between minorities and the average white person is not emphasized. By researching the less known aspects of the Great Depression, we as educators will be able to give our students a variety of information and allow our students to see the Great Depression from many different perspectives besides the one in their text books.

D. Background information on instructional strategies

Direct Instruction—the teacher lecturing to the students: teacher centered
Peer tutoring/group work—Students work with peers to complete a task together with each student receiving a specific role to play.
Web-based inquiry—this is where a unit is constructed on a website where students visit the site to receive their instruction and activities. They can do research online, work in partners/groups, and given freedom to explore at their own pace.
Concept map for reading—this is also called a graphic organizer or another form of note taking. These aids help to organize a student’s thoughts and main ideas about a certain subject.
Jigsaw—this is where the class is broken up into groups. Each group is given a topic to research or discuss. After a period of time, students should reorganize into different groups. Each new group should consist of at least one member from the previous groupings. At this point each person shares the ideas they learned or found to their new group.
Research project—here students do in-depth research about one topic and present the information to the class in a variety of different ways. They may chose to do an oral report, make a poster, write a skit, or make a model.
Activating prior knowledge—this is where a teacher begins a unit with a KWL chart to encourage the students to think about the new topic at hand. The teacher uses this as a jumping off point to begin the unit. It is very important to know the background of the student’s knowledge before introducing new material.
Role playing—this may also be described as readers’ theater. The students pick a role and act it out. This causes the students to realize the emotions the different characters felt during these times a great deal more than strictly reading from the text.
Interviews—are a good way to learn information about a subject that is not extremely outdates. Primary sources are important, and it is a great skill to be able to conduct an interview to receive information a person is interested in.
Centers—are a way for students to break up into groups and discover information by themselves. There are different places in the room where students can go to do their learning. These centers each have different information at them. The students are to take their time at each center and move on to the next until they have been presented with all the information available.

II. Resource Review

A. Student Resources

Brown, Harriet. Welcome to Kit’s World, 1934: Growing Up During America’s Great Depression. Pleasant Company Publications: Middleton, WI, 2002.

This book focuses on the lives and times of the Great Depression. It discusses how it affected the lives of different races of people living in the United States during this time. It also examines what life was like before, during, and the changes that happened to bring the country out of the Depression. It also makes reference to other countries and specific families and persons that were too, effected by the Depression. This book is very useful in learning how the Great Depression changed the country and the people that lived here. It is full of pictures and vast amounts of information.

Cooper, Michael L. Dust to Eat: Drought and Depression in the 1930s. Clarion Books: New York, NY, 2004.

Farmers were affected greatly by the times of the Great Depression. This book looks into how the times that lead up to the Great Depression affected them during and after the Great Depression. Little attention is paid to people living in the cities but focuses more on farmers and how their lives were changed. Another topic that is addressed in this book is the fact that many U.S. citizens had to leave their homes and travel west for food, money, and a place to live. This is a good book in that it brings the scope of the Great Depression out to the farmers and others and discusses the hard times that they had to face.

Damon, Duane. Headin’ for Better Times: The Arts of the Great Depression. Lerner Publications Company: Minneapolis, MN, 2002.

When FDR was elected as president, his new programs and reforms were what helped to bring the country out of the Great Depression. This book examines the new programs and organizations that were formed and how they helped the country. In particular, it looks at the program that was designed to help the artists during the Great Depression. They too were Americans in need of help. This book is very beneficial when looking at how the government of the United States stepped in and began to help the country recover from the Great Depression.

Farrell, Jacqueline. The Great Depression. Lucent Books: San Diego, 1996.

This non-fiction book begins with a timeline of events that occurred during the Great Depression. This lays out for students the major events of the time period, as well as when they occurred in relation to one another. The book is divided into seven chapters, each dealing with major landmarks in the Great Depression in chronological order. The pages are full of text, with few pictures, which gives the book a textbook feel. The information is accurate and informative, but may be a bit overwhelming to a young reader. This book would be difficult to read in one sitting because it contains so much information. However, it would be a great supplement to a textbook or as a means of researching a specific topic.

Gunderson, C. (2004). The Great Depression. ABDO Publishing Company: Edina, Minnesota.

A book that provides a brief description of the events of the Great Depression. The book includes pictures, a timeline, and a glossary. Students could use this book as an introduction to the Great Depression and have a general idea of when events occurred and their effects on the people of the United States.

Harris, N. (2003). Witness to history: the Great Depression. Heinemann Library: Chicago, IL.

An informative book that starts before the depression continues through the causes and all the way to the effects of the depression. The book is divided into sections with headings and includes an index and glossary in the back. Unfamiliar words are in bold and defined within the text. Not only is information on the depression provided, but pictures, a timeline, a list of resources, and s list of further research is included. The book is very user-friendly and inviting for readers.

McElvaine, R. S. (2000). The Depression and New Deal a history in documents. Oxford University Press: New York, New York.

This book presents a collection of primary sources from American life during the Great Depression. Sources include pictures, interviews, letters, songs, and cartoons. The different sources provided a variety of opinions and views from the depression. This reference will allow students to find several perspectives on the depression.

Meltzer, Milton. Driven from the Land: The Story of the Dust Bowl. Benchmark Books: Tarrytown, NY, 2000.

Money was one of the many hardships that people faced during the Great Depression. Through this book insight can be gained into how the change in the Stock Market affected peoples’ lives through a lack of food, money, employment, and homes. A good book to look at with pictures depicting what life was really like for people.

Nishi, Dennis. Life During the Great Depression. Lucent Books: San Diego, 1998.

This book is similar to the book The Great Depression by Jacqueline Farrell, which are from the same series of books called “The World History Series”. This book is less informative from a historical standpoint than the other book in this series, but may be more interesting to young readers. It may be more interesting because the book focuses on the way people lived during the Great Depression. It talks about the lives of women, children, minorities, and the elderly. The pages in the book are full of text, with few pictures, and would be hard for children to read in one sitting. Again, this book would be useful as a supplement to a textbook or as a research supplement because it may be overwhelming initially. The book is interesting and is a great look at the lives of ordinary people during the 1930’s.

Ross, S. (1998). Causes and consequences of the Great Depression. Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers: Austin Texas.

This is another book that describes the events of the Great Depression and their effects on the United States. Once again, this is a book that is divided into chapters and follows a chronological order. Pictures, a glossary, and a timeline help aide the understanding of the Great Depression. Students would find this book engaging and useful as a reference.