Great Depression Unit Plan

Title: The Great Depression: How do governments respond to

social, political, and economic crises?

Curriculum Designers: Laura Deren, Lauren Sordellini, Melissa Viola

Unit Essential Questions

How do governments respond to social, political and economic crisis?
What caused the Great Depression?
Why did the crash of the market affect those who did not own stock?
How did the concept of checks and balances relate to the New Deal?
What parts of the new deal legislation are still in effect today?

What was the impact of the Great Depression on life in the U.S.?

Major Topics
Causes of the Great Depression
Hoover vs. FDR
New Deal
    -Response to the New Deal
    -Second New Deal
Effects of New deal on America
Effects of New deal on Europe/Environment
Effects of the Great Depression

Teaching Strategies
Digital Lecture
Collaborative group work
Hands-on demonstrations
Inquiry project
Webquest

School Context

    Cheektowaga Central High School, located in the town of Cheektowaga, is a first ring suburban school district located just outside of Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, NY is one of the largest cities in the state, and while previously an economically prosperous city with the growth of steel mills, it now faces hardships both economically and socially. Cheektowaga borders Buffalo on the east, and is the second largest suburb of the city of Buffalo with a population of 94,000+ people. Cheektowaga Central School District is one of several school districts in the area, and the high school maintains a student population of around 800 students. This is a very diverse population, in every definition of the word. As of the 2007-2008 school year, about 1% of students were Native American, 25% were Black or African American, 3% were Hispanic of Latino, 2% were Asian, and 70% were White. Not only is CCHS ethnically and racially diverse, but it also serves students of various economic backgrounds. During the 2007-2008 school year, 23% of students were eligible for free lunch and 8% of students were eligible for reduced lunch prices.

            Overall, the students at CHHS are making good academic progress. The school is in good standing academically and is making adequate progress in Math, English Language Arts, and Science according to the New York State’s accountability standards. It is for this reason that CHHS is an excellent school for this curriculum clinic. We will be spending our time in 11th grade US History classes, which are taught by Jeremy Lee. Mr. Lee has been teaching at Cheektowaga for the past 16 years. He teaches four class periods of US 11. He is a very traditional teacher. Most of his lessons consist of fill-in the blank guided notes and PowerPoint presentations. While he is traditional in his presentation, Mr. Lee does a wonderful job of making content relevant to students. He tried to make as many modern day connections as possible. He is also very traditional in the content presented. He might be considered more of a history teacher rather than a social studies teacher. His students are Regent's level. Some students are repeating US 11 for the second time. Most of the classes contain students with IEP's or 504 plans, but there are no consultant teacher's in the room.

Purpose    The major topics we plan to teach within our unit on the Great Depression stem from the New York State Curriculum and include the following; causes of the Great Depression, Hoovers reactions to the depression in comparison to the presidency of FDR, the New Deal, public response to the New Deal, the Second New Deal, effects of the New Deal on America, Europe and the environment and lastly the overarching effects of the Great Depression.  In order to teach these major topics we are planning on using a variety of teaching strategies.  Digital lectures will be incorporated into the lessons on the causes of the Great Depression, Hoover vs. FDR and effects of the Great Depression.  We felt that these topics would be most likely to be featured on the regents exam and therefore they were good topics to create digital lectures for.  This way students can refer back to these lectures when they want to review at the end of the year.  To give students additional preparation for the Regents exam they will be given Regents multiple choice questions at the end of key lessons to check for understanding, and will be administered a short 15 question multiple choice test on the last day of the unit when students are presenting their final projects.  We also plan to use hands-on demonstrations during the lesson on causes of the Great Depression to demonstrate how the banks failed through giving each student a certain amount of money and then explaining how the loan process works and why this caused the banks to fail.  The teaching strategy we plan to use to teach the New Deal is collaborative group work.  Students will form groups of three to four and will then be presented with specific problems facing FDR during the Great Depression.  These problems will relate directly to certain New Deal programs, and with teacher guidance students will develop the ideas of the New Deal on their own through group discussion.  To teach the effects of the New Deal we plan to incorporate a webquest in which students will explore how the New Deal changed the American landscape, as well as what effects the New Deal may have had on their local community.  In order to then connect our unit topics as well as incorporate current events we plan to develop a student inquiry project that will ask students to look at how governments respond to social, political and economic crisis.  The rationale for including a inquiry project will be further explained below.

Rationale

    Our group has decided to cover the major areas of the Great Depression that are stressed upon by the New York State Curriculum while also correlating with the Core Curriculum standards. The content and lessons for this unit is in direct correspondence with New York State standards one though five.  Our lesson topics for this unit were modeled from the New York State Social Studies Resource Guide book, where the major events stressed were: “contributing factors” to the Great Depression, “responses to economic woes, the New Deal, effects on work, family, communities, and environment during the Great Depression, and effects of the Great Depression on Industrialized Europe.” Each lesson will have a "Do Now" activity containing Regents level multiple choice questions revolving around the theme of the unit of study. This will allow students to become more familiar with Regents style questions as well as help measure student improvement on the material being covered as they continue through the unit. The lessons in this unit aim to develop the necessary skills required in the core curriculum standards as well. Some examples of the activities where skills from the core curriculum may be developed are through class debates and an essay on the Great Depression. Each of these activities requires students to evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources and integrate the main concepts and ideas gathered from each source into a well organized and thought out essay or presentation. Students, through the debate activity, will be required to determine how to best read and synthesize a variety of primary sources. They will then use the key ideas and concepts gathered from their materials to hold an in class debate, acting on the varying perspectives to the debate topic. Through inquiry projects and group work students will utilize a variety of primary and secondary resources to understand why the country fell into a depression and how our government responded to this crisis.The inquiry project enables students to create a project using a variety of different levels of digital media; they are allowed to create a podcast, a music video, a movie, etc.The overall unit goal is for the class to develop their critical thinking skills through use of primary and secondary sources in a variety of ways, connecting the events of the Great Depression with other past events as well as events from more recent times. 

    *For a quick reference of the Common Core Standard utilized: RH.11-12.1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole. RH.11-12.2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas. RH.11-12.3. Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain. RH.11-12.6. Evaluate authors’ differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors’ claims, reasoning, and evidence. RH.11-12.7. Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem. RH.11-12.8. Evaluate an author’s premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. RH.11-12.9. Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

    *For quick reference of New York State standards: Standard one, “use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York." Standard two, "use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives." Standard three, "use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface." Standard four, "use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the U.S. and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through market and nonmarket mechanisms." Standard five, "use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the U.S. and other nations; the U.S. Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.”

    Throughout the course of this unit, we plan to interweave direct instruction about the Great Depression with an inquiry project. This inquiry project will ask students to examine government responses to political, social, and economic crises in the US in an effort to compare the government responses during the Great Depression. This will allow students to make a connection between the content being presented and current or past events that are of interest to students. We chose this methodology for several reasons. First, an inquiry project allows us to differentiate instruction as students will be placed in small heterogeneous groups that are completely student driven. Student groups will have an opportunity to choose a topic to research, decide on research methods, and choose how to demonstrate their learning. Throughout the inquiry process, the teacher will act as a facilitator and guide students to various multi-modal mediums to enhance their learning. This project also allows teachers to lead students  in instruction about effective small group collaboration and really work to develop good inquiry skills, which also helps to fulfill current Common Core Standards. The inquiry approach also offers significant benefits over a more traditional coverage approach. Inquiry offers student voice and choice, strategic thinking, authentic investigations, student responsibility, cross-disciplinary studies, multiple resources, and a real purpose for students. Students are the knowledge creators, and this project allows authentic opportunities to engage in learning.

Click here to view our Course Calendar