Lesson: The Great Depression Around The World

Course: History of the Americas II,

IB 12^th grade, 20^th Century Topics

Standards:

The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1940.

-Students will demonstrate knowledge of the causes of the Great Depression and how it affected Americans in all walks of life.

-Students will demonstrate knowledge of how the New Deal addressed the Great Depression and transformed American federalism.

# of Days: 5 days for lesson

Guiding Questions:

1. How did the Great Depression affect countries other than the U.S?
2. What were some of the causes of the Depression in countries other than the U.S?
3. The U.S. dealt with the Depression with the New Deal—how did other countries find their way out?

Lesson Sequence and Instructional Strategies:

Day 1: Question of the Day: Using the following IB analysis strategy, students begin the class by looking at a Dorthea Lange photo (any picture is fine, the photos are very easily found on the Internet). 

O:

P:

V:

L:

This is an IB analysis strategy that is used on the exams in May.  Students will be expected to use this for all the work that is done in class, unless another strategy is provided.  Students should give the Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation of all documents that are being studied.

This photo, along with all questions of the day, should be done individually at the beginning of class in student’s notebooks and then discussed as a large group.

As a large group, spend 10-15 minutes reviewing the causes and effects of the Great Depression on the United States.  This portion of the Depression should be covered prior to the lesson on the Depression around the world so students have a solid base of information.  The teacher should use a large sheet of poster type paper to record student responses and these should be posted in the classroom from all the classes.

The above activity may take longer than the time given; it just depends on the class.  After the review, divide students into groups of 3-4 if they aren’t already.  Pass out a different document to each group that deals with the Depression in Canada.  (These documents are in hard copy and attached at the end of the lesson).

Each group should go through their document to become the experts—no other group should have the same document.  The group should begin analyzing the document by using the same IB strategy—O, P, V, L.  This should maybe take 10 minutes—the documents are not very long.

Groups should be prepared to report out to the large group their analysis of the documents.  Depending on the class, this could take quite a bit of time, especially if other students have questions.  The group reporting could continue into the next class period the following day.

Day 2: Question of the day: Students will analyze primary source materials—pictures and/or political cartoons from the Depression in other countries.  A list of these materials can be found at the end of the lesson.

Classes will more than likely need to finish their group reporting from the Canadian documents from the previous class.  Once the presentations are finished, the following questions should be discussed as a large group:

1. From the documents, what facts or what do we KNOW about the Depression in Canada?
2. What conclusions can be drawn from these documents?
3. How did the Canadian government respond to these conditions?
4. From the documents, how was the Depression in Canada similar or different to the Depression in the United States?

Day 3:  Question of the day: Students will analyze primary source materials—pictures and/or political cartoons from the Depression in other countries.  A list of these materials can be found at the end of the lesson.

The class will be going to the computer lab (or if there is a wire-less laptop cart available for students to use, even better!).  With a partner, students will be using the Internet to find primary (or secondary if that is what is available) that have to do with the causes or effects of the Depression in countries other than the U. S. and Canada.  Student pairs should find evidence from at least 3 other countries.  Before students leave the computer lab or classroom, they need to have the websites and hard copies of the documents.  These documents need to be brought to class the following day.

Homework: Students need to read section 100, p. 764-772 in the text A History of the Modern World. 

Day 4 and possibly Day 5: Question of the day: Students will be given a reading quiz from the previous night’s reading.  Students should take this “quiz” by themselves and write down all answers in their notebooks.

1. How did the stock market crash affect countries around the world other than the U.S?
2. What were the some of the cultural reactions around the world to the crisis of the Depression?

Students should sit with their partners during class and have the documents from the previous day’s research out.  Students will begin the lesson with analyzing each of the documents they found using O, P, L, V.  At then end of class, this analysis will be collected along with the hard copy of the primary documents that were found.

Depending on the size of the class, this can be done many different strategies.  The groups should be exposed to all of the documents that were found.  One strategy is to rotate documents through the groups by giving each pair of students 5 minutes to examine the documents.  Students may briefly take notes on each document, but no written analysis is due (5 minutes is not enough time to do thorough analysis).  This could take time the following day if the class is large or 10 minutes could be given with the documents.

Assessment:

Whenever the student pairs have read through all the documents, students should meet once again to discuss the following assignment:

Individually, students need to write between 500-700 words to answer the guiding questions about a country other than the U.S. and Canada during the Great Depression.

1. How did the Great Depression affect the country chosen?
2. What were some of the causes of the Depression in the country chosen?
3. The U.S. dealt with the Depression with the New Deal—how did the country chosen find their way out of the Depression?

Students can work with their partner on a rough draft in answer to the questions.  Each student must write the 500-700 word response individually and must choose a different country from their partner. 

Instructional Considerations:

The largest consideration to be taken into account for this lesson is computer access.  In some schools, the computer labs are booked weeks in advance.  Students do also need access to printers, which can be a problem.  This lesson can be modified having students work in larger groups or printing less documents.  The number of documents and the time given in class to look at them isn’t as important as students have access to a wide variety of documents that discuss what happened during the Great Depression in other countries.  The teacher can find these documents, but if possible students should go to the computer lab to research.  (More students equals more documents and possibly some that the teachers didn’t find).

Materials/Resources:

The most important resource with this lesson is the computer lab or laptops with Internet access and a printer.

The teacher will also need to have larger chart paper or poster type paper.  Students will need to have their textbooks and notebooks.  Teachers should also prepare questions of the day using photos and/or other primary source materials.  Finally the teacher will need to photo copy the documents from Canada for the first part of the analysis.

There are many resources on the Internet, but the following are suggestions.

Day 1: Skid Row photos

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/SkidRow2S.jpg

Day 2: Breadline, United States photo

http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Belmont_HS/tkm/Pics/Breadline%202/food….

Day 3: Political cartoon

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student/asessment/resources/online/2001/eo….

Day 4: Dustbowl, Canada photo

http://www.canadafirst.net/our_heritage/h-h_stevens/dustbowl.gif

Day 5: Dustbowl, United State photo

http://www.upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Dallas_South_Dakota_1…

Comments:

This lesson will be the last in the unit for the Great Depression unit.  A review for the essay exam will begin as soon as the 500-700 writing assignment has been given to students.  Another option with this lesson is to teach the world perspective on the Depression before exploring the topic in the United States and Canada.