The Dust Bowl

Grade Levels: 3 - 5

Objectives

• Students will use vocabulary related to the Dust Bowl.
• Students will read about the people and events that were a part of the Dust Bowl.
• Students will take notes about the most important information read.
• Students will use information learned to dramatize a television interview of a fictional Dust Bowl survivor.

Materials

• The Dust Bowl worksheet
• Surviving the Dust Bowl website
  (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/maps/index.html
• An Eyewitness Account website
  (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/sfeature/eyewitness.html)

Procedures

1. Introduce key vocabulary: desperate, drought, foreclosure, Great Depression, migrant farmers, relief.
2. Invite students to work individually or with partners to complete the Dust Bowl worksheet as they visit both websites.
3. Encourage students to work with partners to write a script for a fictional television interview of a Dust Bowl survivor, using authentic facts from the websites.
4. Have students act out the interviews for the class.
5. One student in each pair can be the reporter while the other is the Dust Bowl survivor.
6. Set aside time for discussion of the worksheets and interviews.
   

Assessment

• Use a rubric to evaluate students' ability to gather and present accurate and important information about the Dust Bowl.
  
• Find a variety of assessment techniques to use with this lesson.
  

Extension Activities

• Choose from a large collection of cross-curricular activities for all grade levels.
• Students can learn more about the Great Depression by searching the Web. Encourage them to explore the site and then write a fact list of the five most important things they learned about this time period.

Standards Correlations

Standards for the English Language Arts

Students:

• read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions of human experience.
• adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.

National Educational Technology Standards

Students:

• demonstrate a sound understanding of the nature and operation of technology systems.
• use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences.