Immigration/Migration: Today and During the Great Depression Unit II: Migration

While students are conducting their interviews outside class, in class they will be learning about the events, causes and effects of the Great Depression and viewing Work Projects Administration (WPA) photographs of the era.

Lesson 1 - Voices From the Dust Bowl

1. In the library media center, the librarian introduces American Memory and the Library of Congress, reinforcing the concept of primary sources. The librarian demonstrates how to access Voices from the Dust Bowl. Students (in cooperative learning groups) search the collection to find an interview, download it, and save to disk or audio tape. The groups listen to the interview, find a three to five minute excerpt to transcribe, and repeat the analysis (four question exercise).
2. Students report their findings to the class.

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Lesson 2 - the Great Depression

Students select a photograph from America from the Great Depression to World War II, the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection and use the Photo Analysis Guide. [the students may think of more questions than answers.]

• Option: students write a one or two-paragraph narrative about the photograph.
• Option: show the film Riding the Rails.

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Lesson 3 - Role Playing from Voices from the Dust Bowl

1. In pairs, using the "subject" from Voices from the Dust Bowl, a student will role-play the person while another person asks questions used for family members, and then change places. (If the original interview was too brief, select a longer one.) The pairs of students will discuss the similarities and differences between the people in Voices from the Dust Bowl and American Life Histories, 1936-1940.
2. Have students ask their four "core" questions of any member of the Joad family. This can be done as role playing in teams of two, with all family members represented, or as individual reflection on the part of a single student.

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Lesson 4 - The Grapes of Wrath

1. Students view the The Grapes of Wrath in class.
2. In the library, students look for background information on the Internet about The Grapes of Wrath to answer these questions:
• Who wrote the novel the film was based on?
• What year was the novel published?
• What year was the film released? Where is the title from? What does it mean?
• Who was the director, and who starred in the film?
• How is the film considered by reviewers and historians?
• Did the film cause any action to be taken in real life?
• What was the "Dust Bowl"?
3. In the library, the librarian introduces online searching by demonstrating how to search for information about The Grapes of Wrath, both the book and the film, using a variety of search sites. The librarian could introduce the Directory of Internet Resources from the Library of Congress Learning Page, too.
   1. The librarian enters "the grapes of wrath" (with the quotation marks) and clicks on search. (Point out that a narrow search is best.) Some typical hits will include:
   • amazon.com - [point out that this is an online bookstore, but it does have reviews from experts and ordinary readers]
   • a music band called Grapes of Wrath
   • The Battle Hymn of the Republic
   • a festival and car show
   • sites about John Steinbeck
   • school papers about the novel
   2. Questions for class discussion:
   • Who creates web sites?
   • Which ones are more likely to be trusted?
   • What is plagiarism?
   • Can you use a paper word-for-word off the web?

4. To find more information about the film, search for "grapes of wrath" and "movie" or use the Internet Movie Database.
5. Demonstrate a fake site [a website constructed as a joke - used to show that the viewer needs to be as skeptical - if not more so - of the Internet as print]. Note: these sites are often short-lived.
• An example of a fake site is California's Velcro Crop.