Students investigate how economic choices, public policy, and lived experience shaped the Great Depression and the New Deal, using local archives, genealogy records, and primary sources to connect national history to their own community. They compare causes such as speculation, tariffs, bank failures, and Federal Reserve policy, examine how different groups experienced hardship in Texas and the United States, and evaluate competing responses to the crisis. Through collaboration, feedback, and revision, they create a community timeline or digital story map that shows how New Deal programs changed government’s role and how those effects still appear in daily life today.

Students will investigate the economic conditions of the 1920s and explain how speculation, tariffs, bank failures, and Federal Reserve policies contributed to the Great Depression, using evidence from text sets and primary sources aligned to TEKS US.16A and US.16B. They will analyze how the Depression affected different groups in Texas and the United States, including workers, farmers, women, children, and people of Mexican heritage, and compare New Deal responses with critics’ alternatives while evaluating how agencies like the FDIC, SEC, and Social Security Administration still shape life today. Through collaboration with library archive and genealogy staff, students will create a community timeline or digital story map that uses local records to communicate historical claims clearly, seek and apply feedback, and present multiple perspectives with empathy. Students will reflect on how their research connects past policy decisions to their own community and lives today through exhibition dialogue, gallery walk responses, and team reflection.

Students will create evidence charts and annotated source notes from newspapers, photographs, oral histories, census records, and genealogy documents; these will feed into a draft claim board after the mystery box launch and a revised planning storyboard for their final product. In teams, they will produce either a community timeline display with archival clippings, captions, and policy connections or a digital story map that pins local Great Depression stories to places in the community with short audio narration. Each project must show causes of the Depression, effects on different groups including people of Mexican heritage, and comparisons between New Deal programs and opposing approaches, while explaining how agencies like the FDIC, SEC, and Social Security Administration still shape life today. For exhibition, students will also prepare a short presentation script, station visuals, and sticky-note reflection prompts for guests at the showcase.

Open with an “Archive Detectives” mystery box in which teams examine reproduced local newspapers, photographs, census pages, relief applications, and short oral history excerpts from the Great Depression. Students make quick evidence-based inferences about what caused hardship for these families, which groups were affected differently, and what government responses might appear later in the story, then post one claim and one question on a class board. Invite a public library archives or genealogy staff member to introduce how these records are used to trace local history and preview the tools students will use in their own investigation. Close with a brief whole-class reveal of the essential question and the challenge to create a community timeline or digital story map showing how the Depression changed local lives and how New Deal policies still matter today.

Host a “From Crisis to Change” expo in the school library where students present community timelines and digital story maps at display stations for peers, families, and public library archive staff. Guests rotate through primary source displays, listen to brief student explanations, and ask questions about how local families experienced unemployment, migration, hardship, and New Deal policy changes. Include a gallery walk with sticky-note responses so visitors and classmates can note which New Deal programs still affect life today. Before the event, build in a short rehearsal so teams can refine their pacing, clarity, and evidence use after peer and teacher feedback.