How long should an American Memory-based lesson be? How ambitious? What kinds of support do we need to provide for students so that they can find materials on the Web site, make sense of them, and present what they have learned?

Participants will learn the components of successful Web-related lessons by working with lessons that have been field-tested in the facilitator's high school classroom. The sample lessons were designed to enrich students' study of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the Depression Era, and use three different American Memory collections that focus on the Depression Era. The participants will play the role of students, complete an inquiry-based lesson, and discuss their findings. As teachers, the participants will analyze the lesson's components and investigate ways to extend it using additional collections.

Objectives

At the end of this workshop participants will be able to:

• identify key components of successful student online lessons;
• describe some of the realities that Steinbeck would have seen while writing The Grapes of Wrath (the physical, cultural, and economic aspects of Dust Bowl and migrant life);
• describe some of the styles and subjects of New Deal era photographers, as well as the purposes and accomplishments of New Deal writers and folklorists.

Tasks in brief

In this workshop, participants will:

• explore America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black and White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945;
• navigate and search photograph, text, and sound recording collections in American Memory
;
• work through an interdisciplinary lesson on The Grapes of Wrath and the Dustbowl.

Resources

1. Student lesson "FSA-OWI Photo Project," with student worksheets
2. Additional examples of Depression-related student lessons:
   1. "WPA Federal Writer’s Project"
   2. "Voices of the Dustbowl."
3. The Grapes of Wrath: Thematic Chapters
4. American Memory Collections:
   1. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black and White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945
   2. American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
   3. Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941
5. Samples of students' projects and work

NOTE - This workshop was developed by Michael Federspiel, Social Studies Coordinator, Midland Public Schools, Midland, MI 48640.