‘Subject: Social Studies/Literacy Grade Level: 4" Grade The Great Depression Missouri Grade Level Standards: SS5 1.6; SSS 1.5, 1.10 National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: Time, Continuity and Change; People, Places and Environments; Production, Distribution and Consumption; ‘Time to Complete Lesson: 2-3 days. This does not include the time that it will take to read aloud. Lesson Objectives/Goa ‘Students will be able to identify and analyze the thoughts and emotions of people living during the time period of the Great Depression by using letters and other printed/electronic resources provided in class to help students create a letter of their own. © Students will summarize information in order to make conclusions about the time period known as the Great Depression in the United States. © Students will perform what they have learned by reading the letters that they each created for the class. ‘Students will analyze and respond to their classmates letters in a manner that will reflect the emotions that were felt during the Great Depression. Prerequisites: ‘¢ Students will need to have basic knowledge of letter writing, which is a skill they would have learned in previous grade levels. © Students will also need to have read the book by Russell Freedman, Children of the Great Depression. You will read this book before the lesson during read aloud time. This should take about 3 days of read aloud time which totals about an hour and a half to read the ‘ook. This will allow students to get a little background knowledge before we start the lesson. Supplemental Materials: Book: Children of the Great Depression by Russell Freedman PowerPoint: Includes pictures out of previous book Smart board connected to a computer and the Internet Paper for students to write letters on As many other computers for student use as possible for additional research ‘Additional websites for students research © http://www. kidskonnect.com/subjectindex/16-educational/history/267-sreat- depression.htmn © http://w bs.org/wnet/newyork//laic/episode6/topict/e6_ topic1.htm! © (Note about this link: Must copy and paste into the address bar or it will not work. If you follow it from lesson plan, it says that it isn’t there. However, if you copy and paste into address bar it works just fine). = Print out the following for classroom resources for each group {inne er cnfeeanarferaim http://newdeal. feri.org/eleanor/Ih1136.htm hnttp://newdeal fer org/eleanor/mi0136.htm hntto://newdeal feri org/eleanor/oc0335.him 0000Lesson: Connes © _http://newdeal.feri.org/eleanor/mb0335.htm © http://newdeal.feri.org/eleanor/ma0134.htm Make sure that the Book: Children of the Great Depression has been exposed to the students in some way. The best way to do this would be to read the book aloud during reading aloud time, starting a few days before the Great Depression lesson begins. This will be a good introduction to the lesson. This is the first step that must be completed before the lesson proceeds. n to Prior Knowledge: Students will use the knowledge that they leamed from the book during read aloud to make inferences about the Great Depression and the affects it had on people that lived during that time. Students will also use literacy skills by writing letters that express the emotions that were felt during this time period by different groups of people such as students, parents, or elected officials. Letter writing is a skill that they would have done in earlier grades, but will also be something that was reviewed at the beginning of the year. ‘Students will also use their skills of making inferences (leamed in previous grade levels and reviewed in fourth grade) to interpret different sources in order to get a big picture of life during the Great Depression. Instructional Methods: Hook: ‘© The hook will be used in two different parts. The first introduction into this lesson will be when the books is read during read aloud several days before the lesson begins. This will get students interested in the subject matter. ‘© During the read aloud, make sure to ask questions to make the students think ahead of starting the lesson, Some examples of questions to ask to foster discussion would be: ‘What do you think is happening in the picture? How do you think the people in this picture are feeling? What would you do if you lived during this time period? How do you think the Great Depression affected people’s lives? How long do you think people were affected by this time period? * Did they recover quickly or did it take a while? What sacrifices did many people have to make to survive? How would you feel if this was a reality in your life? Is there any way you would try to help these people? © How would you support your family during this time of hardship? © The above questions can be used throughout the entire lesson because these ideas relate to all of the ideas that will be covered, eo 0000 ooo ‘These questions are important to ask because it will get students thinking about the topic ahead of the actual lesson, It will get students to start thinking about things that they probably wouldn’t think about otherwise. It will also help students to start thinking historically about what is going on so that they could put themselves in theshoes of the people in the book and try to understand what it must have been like to live through this time period. These are all important things that you want students to think about ahead of the lesson. ‘© The second phase of this introduction will be the PowerPoint that was created using images out of the book: Children of the Great Depression by Russell Freedman. This PowerPoint includes powerful images out of this text. You will use these images to allow the students to make inferences and use the book to determine the emotions and thoughts that could have been involved during this time period in American History. This will also encourage students to think historically because they can put themselves into the shoes of other people and think how they would have thought during the time. This also gives students a background and visual images of the Great Depression and lear some context about it. Instruction Methods: Lesson Days: © While you are going through the PowerPoint (the hook), make sure you are prompting the students to start thinking about what is going on in the pictures. You want your students to start thinking historically and trying to get a firm understanding of what is going on in the pictures and what it might have meant for the people living in this time period. © Review some of the same questions (above) that you asked your students during the read aloud of the book. See questions above. Use these questions to get students to think for themselves, rather than telling them What might have been going through the minds of those who lived during this time period. Make sure that you do your best to not imply what your personal opinion is. It is important to hear what the students have to say, not what the teacher thinks. © htto://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork//leic/episode6/topicl/e6 topict.ntm! Open the above link. (Make sure to copy and paste into address bar or the link will not work) © For each of the following tabs within the above link, there is text that goes along with the pictures on each page. Just briefly explain what is going on and make sure to enlarge the pictures for the students to see. They will get the jest of what is going on with an explanation. You can use the information given to explain what is going on, or you can read the text given on the website together. ‘+ First, click on the economic collapse tab on the right hand side of this page with ‘the whole class. This tab talks a bit about how the collapse started and the beginnings of the Great Depression, 0 Ask students if they can think of how an economic collapse would affect people. © Then click on the words “The Great Depression in New York" at the top of the page to take you back to the menu. «Then explore the breadlines tab. Most of your students probably have never encountered a bread line in their life so this will be an eye-opening experience. Then go back to main page for new topic. 0 Ask students how scary it must have been for people to have to rely on other people for their food?Hoovervilles is the next topic. This is also something they have probably never seen, Enlarge the picture and briefly talk about what is going on. Go back to ‘main page for next topic. © Ask students how they would feel if they were living in a place like the Hoovervilles. You should skip the last section because | thit lesson is. Next, break the students up many students you have. Give the students each copies of the letters that you printed out that were written to the first lady. (See attached at end of lesson) ‘Also, allow students to explore other links provided in the resources section on ‘the smart board or any other computer/tablet that you have available. The more technological devices you have, the better for this. You want your students to be able to explore these topics for themselves as well as what you have already shared with them. The other links are good and kid friendly links that the students can use. It would be a good idea to give the students these links electronically so they do not have to type it in and possibly make a mistake and end up on some other webpage. So ahead of the lesson, make sure these links are available for the students on the smart board in an electronic format. © Give students the following questions to think about as they are exploring links = How did people living during the Great Depression feel? + Were jobs easy to get or difficult? "What type of conditions were people living in? "What did adults and children alike have to endure during the Great Depression? "How would these hardships make you feel? = What sacrifices did people have to make to survive? = Did the lives of children change because of the Great Depression? © Byusing the above topics, the students will have the groundwork to write a letter that would help paint a picture of the Great Depression. Give the students about 30 minutes or so to check out the links and the printed letters that were provided. Also make sure the book is available for students to use as well. Make sure you have at least a few of the letters copied for each group so that they get paper copies of these to look at. (© Use the above questions for this part of the activity so that students have some structure with their research, © Have your students make brief notes about what they find using the above questions to use to write their letters. After some initial research has been done using the given resources. Have the students work individually again. Let them move around the room if they want so that they are comfortable and can really focus themselves into the writing process. Next, have your students write a letter. This letter could be from the point of view of a child that was living through the Great Depression. It could also be an kit is a bit more complex than this 10 groups of about four or five depending on howadult/parent that is trying to provide for their family it could also be from the point of view of the First Lady answering letters that many people wrote during, the time period. It is not really important which point of view the students take, just make sure to encourage them to think historically while doing so. In this letter, itis expected of them to depict the conditions that many families were dealing with during the Depression. its important that they understand the consequences behind the stock market failing that led to great unemployment. and bank failures. This is an important topic that students need to understand the importance of because it could happen in their lifetimes (other than the recession that was not that long ago). Although, itis unlikely that a Depression will happen again, students need to understand that this time period was horrible for many people. Students most likely will not understand the in-depth details about the stock market and banks because those are advanced topics, but you do want them to understand the causes of the Depression and some basic information. Formative Assessment: ‘+ This will actually be done in two ways for this lesson. After the students are done writing their letters, they will give them to another student. The student they exchange with will write a response to the letter. This will allow students to be on both sides of the problem. This will also encourage letter-writing and literacy skills. After the response letter has been written, students that wish to share their letters will be allowed to do so with the class. These will also be turned in for a grade. The other way that to use assessment would be an exit slip to see how this lesson. impacted the students. By using these two methods of assessment, you can get an idea from their letters how much they learned about the topic. From the exit slips, you can figure out what they were thinking during the lesson. The exit slip isn’t long, but itis a good way to get honest thoughts out of them without having to worry about the class knowing what they all sai, The following would be the exit slip questions. 1. Write down three quick ideas that were striking to you that you learned from this lesson? Striking can mean anything that stood out to you, was interesting or that you enjoyed. 2. How were the lives of children affected during the Great Depression? 3. Was there anything you want more information about or are confused about? Closure: ‘* For closure to this lesson, it will be when we choose to share our letters in class. This will allow students to see what other students were thinking and would be a nice way to close up this, lesson. Also, this will spark discussion to end our lesson nicely. This discussion will be almost completely student-led as well. You will use the letters that are shared with the class as the starting point of the discussion. This means that it could go in almost any direction possible with the students driving the discussion, Differentiation Recommendations: ‘© For those students that have a little difficulty reading at grade level, you could put students in groups that have like abilities and then have their materials read to them. ‘© Oryou could put opposite abilities in a group and designate different jobs in the groups. Have one of your stronger students be the designated read-aloud students,© For those students that are a little above some of their peers. You could make smaller groups so that each students has just a bit more to do than the other groups. ‘© Another option for those ahead could be to give them a different way to write their letters. This could be anything like a set point of view for the students or allowing them to do a little more outside research. It could also be having the students go more in-depth of the more complicated topics such as the stock market or the bank failures. This would allow those students that could be a bit bored with this to dig little deeper and push themselves a bit more. ‘© Something that students could do if they finished ahead of other groups would be to make their ‘own book about the great depression using extra paper that could be laying around the room. 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