② Deep · Connect & organize

Phase 2 — Connect & organize

Now students take the facts from Phase 1 and relate them: mapping benefits against costs across relief, recovery, and reform, interrogating real primary sources, and building an argument from evidence. Deep learning is where knowledge becomes usable — the bridge to the problem.

🎯 By the end of Phase 2 students can organize the benefits and costs of the New Deal across relief, recovery, and reform, read a primary source for its point of view and reliability, and defend an evaluative claim about the New Deal's expansion of federal power with evidence — the exact moves the problem will demand.

🎟️ Entry ticket — 1-minute warm-up

Concept mapping · d 0.64§113.41(c)(16)(D), (c)(18)(A)

1 · Benefits–costs & relief–recovery–reform concept map

Build a class concept map with "An activist federal government" in the center. On the left, cluster the benefits the New Deal delivered; on the right, the costs and objections — to the federal budget, to business, to constitutional limits, and to those the programs left out. Sort each entry under relief, recovery, or reform. Then add a third ring: long-term effects — what changed permanently because Washington acted this way.

Benefits (New Deal delivered)	Costs / objections	Long-term effects
jobs and direct relief for millions (CCC, WPA)	huge deficit spending and a rising national debt	a permanent, larger federal government
bank insurance and market reform restore trust (FDIC)	critics warn of too much power in Washington and the presidency	Social Security becomes a lasting safety net
Social Security: old-age and unemployment insurance	farm & domestic workers excluded; relief given unequally	a new expectation that government answers for the economy

Talk move: draw an arrow from any benefit or cost to a long-term effect and say the cause-and-effect sentence aloud. This rehearses §113.41(c)(18)(A) and sets up the comparison of the New Deal and its opponents in (c)(16)(D).

Elaboration & organization · d 0.72§113.41(c)(28)(A,B,C)

2 · Primary-source analysis — read for point of view

Give pairs one or two real (district-approved) primary sources — for example an FDR fireside-chat excerpt, a WPA poster, a Dust Bowl / "Migrant Mother" photograph, a critic's political cartoon attacking the New Deal, or the Supreme Court's Schechter v. United States decision striking down the NRA. Use a four-question source routine:

Source: Who made this, when, and why?
Observe: What do you actually see or read? (facts only)
Point of view: Whose story does it tell — and whose is missing?
Question: What does it make you want to find out?

Corroboration check (c)(28)(B): is this a first-hand record or a later opinion? What other source would confirm or complicate it? How do we know?

⚠️ Handling difficult history: Social Security in 1935 originally excluded agricultural and domestic workers — disproportionately Black Americans and women — and New Deal relief was often administered unequally, even as the same programs delivered real relief and lasting reform. Study this honestly and respectfully as documented fact — the point is understanding, not blame or sensationalism (TEC §28.0022).

📚 Primary sources & analysis tools: FDR Library · The Fireside Chats ↗ · LoC · FSA/OWI photographs (Dust Bowl & "Migrant Mother") ↗ · National Archives · DocsTeach: Great Depression & New Deal ↗ · LoC · Getting Started with Primary Sources ↗

Argumentation · d 0.86§113.41(c)(16)(D), (c)(28)(E), (c)(29)

3 · Structured argument — a warm-up claim

A low-stakes rehearsal of the reasoning the problem needs. Pose a focused evaluative question and have students take a side with evidence, using a claim–evidence–reasoning frame. Then have them state the other side's strongest point (civil discourse) — this is the compare-the-New-Deal-and-its-opponents move of §113.41(c)(16)(D).

Warm-up question: Was the New Deal's expansion of federal power a necessary rescue of a suffering nation, or an overreach that cost too much in debt, liberty, and constitutional limits? Give your claim, one piece of evidence from Phase 1 or the sources, and your reasoning.

Sentence stems (ELPS support): "My claim is ______." · "My evidence is ______." · "This matters because ______." · "Someone who disagrees might say ______, but ______."

Note: keep this a practice argument about the general question. The specific 1935 decision — with stakeholders in the room — belongs in Phase 3.

✅ Deep check before the problem: can students name a benefit and a cost of the New Deal, read one source for its point of view and reliability, and state an evaluative claim with evidence? Those three abilities are exactly what Phase 3 will ask them to transfer.

🎫 Exit ticket — check yourself

‹ Phase 1 — Surface Phase 3 — Transfer ›

Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.41; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX.