Summary
This Oklahoma/U.S. history lesson provides students with engaging audio, visual, and textural sources to examine the environmental conditions of the Dust Bowl alongside FDR’s response in his Dust Bowl Fireside Chat. Students engage in the intellectual work of the historian as they evaluate primary source documents and examine paired texts to uncover the causes of and Federal responses to the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma.
Essential Question(s)
What factors contributed to the Dust Bowl? How effectively did the FDR administration respond to the crisis? What impact did this event have on contemporary resource management?
Snapshot
Engage
Students will imagine themselves in the Great Depression and listen to an audio recording of FDR’s Dust Bowl Fireside Chat.
Explore
Students will analyze primary source documents to explore Dust Bowl conditions and their effect on individuals.
Explain
Students will do a close reading of FDR's Dust Bowl Fireside Chat using the Stop and Jot strategy as an analytical reading tool.
Extend
Students will read a second informational text about New Deal responses to the Dust Bowl and will compare and contrast it with the FDR text using an H-Chart.
Evaluate
Students will write a position paper about the impact of New Deal responses to the Dust Bowl or investigate current drought conditions and create a podcast to compare today's conditions to those of the Dust Bowl.
Materials
Photostory: FDR Fireside Chat excerpt
Handout: FDR Fireside Chat full text, September 6, 1936 (modified version also provided)
Dust Bowl photos
Woody Guthrie “Dust Bowl Blues” lyrics
NOAA 1934 Dust Bowl map
NOAA 2013 drought outlook map
Dust Bowl poem
Prairie root systems chart and corn root chart
Belezzuoli oral history interview excerpt
Handout: David Woolner, FDR and the Environment
Handout: H-Chart for paired texts
Engage
Display slide 4 from the Dust Bowl Fireside Chat PowerPoint. Ask students to sit quietly. If possible, darken the lights in the classroom. Take the students back in time to 1936 at the height of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl during the FDR presidency. Explain that many poor Americans simply went to bed at dusk both to save energy and to stave off the pains of hunger during sleep. In an era before mass media, radio was the dominant mode of news delivery, and millions of Americans listened to the radio on Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. to hear FDR give his weekly address to the American public, the Fireside Chat. Ask students to imagine going to bed at dusk, being hungry in the dark, and listening to the president give his speech. This is what it sounded like on September 6, 1936... (Play the PhotoStory with photos and the beginning of FDR's speech.)
After listening and viewing, ask students to speculate by themselves as to why this series of speeches was known as “Fireside Chats.” Ask them to discuss with a partner what they think the main idea was of this initial portion of FDR's address. Then, ask student pairs to share their answers with the whole class. This activity uses a K20 strategy called Think-Pair-Share.
Explore
Display slide 5. Divide students into groups of four or five. Jigsaw the source documents (listed below) by giving each student in the group a different document. At the same time, pass out the document analysis organizer. Instruct students to examine and evaluate their specific document and prepare to share at least three pieces of information that their document reveals about the Dust Bowl with their group. Instruct students that they should record the information about their document in their organizer.
After sufficient time, typically 10 minutes, instruct students to share the information with their groups. While students present their documents to their group, others should record their information in the corresponding section of the document analysis organizer.
Source Documents:
Dust Bowl images
“Dust Bowl Blues” lyrics by Woody Guthrie (An online version of the song can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQYKJaWuj0Y)
NOAA 1934 Dust Bowl map
"I'd Rather Not Be on Relief" lyrics by Lester Hunter Shafter
Belezzuoli oral history interview
Textbook photos, charts/graphics, or text excerpts (optional)
Facilitate a class discussion related to the information in these documents. Ask a few students to share what they gleaned from each document. Discuss with students how this collection of documents adds to their understanding of the Dust Bowl and to the FDR speech excerpt they listened to at the beginning of the lesson.
Explain
Display slide 6. Let students know that the actual Dust Bowl Fireside Chat was a longer speech and that they will be analyzing the majority of the speech with a partner and comparing it to another piece of nonfiction text about the Dust Bowl.
Pass out the modified text of the FDR speech and direct students to read the passage silently. Tell students that as they read each major paragraph, they should stop and jot down the main ideas of that paragraph in the margin. This activity is a K20 Strategy called Stop and Jot. After a sufficient time, around 20 minutes, ask students to share what they found with their partner and to decide upon the main ideas for the entire text. After partner discussions, facilitate a class discussion about the reading, asking a few student groups to share out main ideas with the class.
Extend
Display slide 7. Hand out copies of the article "FDR and the Environment" by David Woolner. Ask students to read this article while using the Stop and Jot strategy again. If you prefer to try another reading strategy, there are several listed on the K20 Center's Strategies page to choose from. After finishing the Woolner text, ask students to share with their partner what they found and then come up with the main ideas for the entire text. If time allows, ask a few student partners to share out with the class.
Display slide 8. After reading and discussing both texts, have students use the H-Chart worksheet to guide their analysis. On the left side of the H-chart, have students write main ideas and thoughts regarding the Fireside Chat text. On the right side of the chart, have students write main ideas and thoughts regarding the Woolner text. In the middle of the H-chart, ask students to write the ‘Third Text,’ which explains their ideas and thoughts about how these two texts compare and ways in which they work as a pair to shine light on the essential questions (How effectively did the FDR administration respond to the crisis? What impact did this event have on contemporary resource management?). This activity is based on the Paired Texts/H-Chart K20 strategy.
Ask student pairs to discuss the third texts that they have created with the class. Ask students to explain how the two texts together deepen their knowledge of the Dust Bowl.
Evaluate
There are several ways to assess this lesson.
Option 1: The H-Chart could be used as a student assessment.
Option 2: Ask students to write a position paper using the following prompt: “New Deal responses to the Dust Bowl effectively ended the economic and environmental crisis.” Students should cite visual and textual evidence to support their position. Consider allowing students to visit the Oklahoma State Impact site to research information related to the current drought in the Great Plains. Follow up by asking students to write a brief essay or position paper about the similarities and differences between the two droughts.
Option 3: Ask students to adapt the Fireside Chat into the 21st Century format of a podcast on the topic of the current drought happening in the Great Plains and how it compares to the Dust Bowl.
Resources
K20 Center. (n.d.). Jigsaw. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/d9908066f654727934df7bf4f507c1b8
K20 Center. (n.d.). Paired Texts/H-Chart. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/d9908066f654727934df7bf4f5060ba6
K20 Center. (n.d.). Stop and jot. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/d9908066f654727934df7bf4f5077921
K20 Center. (n.d.). Think-pair-share. Strategies. Retrieved from https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/d9908066f654727934df7bf4f5064b49