High School · US History Since 1877 · §113.41 · Problem-Based Learning
The New Deal, 1935 — a Question of Government's Reach
A Problem-Based Learning unit. Students step into the Depression year of 1935, take on a stakeholder's point of view, and work a real, ill-structured question about government, the economy, and citizens' welfare — building from surface to deep to transfer learning. The teacher is a guide, not the answer key.
Driving question: It is 1935 and the Depression grinds on. Should the federal government take on this much responsibility for the economy and its citizens — and at what cost to other principles?
The three-phase path (do them in order)
Problem-solving is a transfer move — it only works once students have knowledge to reason with. So the problem in Phase 3 is deliberately gated behind Phases 1 and 2.
⛔ Gate: don't open the Phase 3 problem until students have finished the surface and deep activities. Meeting the problem too early turns inquiry into guessing.
Big idea & objectives
Big idea: In a crisis, a nation must weigh economic security, individual liberty, constitutional limits, and cost when it decides how much responsibility government should take — and the choices made in the New Deal permanently expanded the federal role while leaving a contested legacy of debt, power, and unequal benefit.
Know: what caused the Great Depression, what the New Deal's relief, recovery, and reform programs actually did, and how the New Deal reshaped the roles of state and federal government.
Understand: the same New Deal looks profoundly different from each stakeholder's point of view — a New Dealer, an unemployed worker, a business owner, a Supreme Court justice, a Black sharecropper, and a critic who says it does not go far enough.
Do: run the problem-solving and decision-making process end to end — identify the problem, gather information, list and weigh options, choose and defend a solution, and evaluate it (§113.41(c)(31)(B)).
Standards this unit is aligned to (§113.41)
TEKS SE
Where it lives in the unit
(c)(16)(B–E)
Causes & effects of the Great Depression; the New Deal vs. its opponents; agencies & programs — Surface facts, Deep sources
(c)(18)(A)
The impact of New Deal legislation on the roles of state and federal government — Deep concept map, Transfer
(c)(28)(A–F)
Source analysis, points of view, claim + evidence — Deep & Transfer
(c)(29)
Communicate findings in written and oral form — Deep argument, Transfer brief
(c)(31)(B)
The problem-solving & decision-making process — the entire Transfer phase
Teacher prep & materials
Print the facilitator guide (teacher moves, map of possibilities, role cards, debrief prompts) and the assessment pack (rubric + individual-in-group).
Chart paper or a projected space for three shared columns: Hunches · Know · Need-to-Know (the KWHL chart).
Vetted sources for investigation (district-approved). Suggested public-access sources are listed in the facilitator guide.
No logins, no accounts — every page runs in the browser. Student writing and products live on paper or in tools your district already vets.
⚠️ Honest history: this unit teaches the New Deal's real exclusions — Social Security originally left out agricultural and domestic workers (disproportionately Black and women), and relief was often administered unequally — directly, factually, and respectfully, alongside its genuine relief and lasting reforms and the constitutional fight over federal power (TEC §28.0022).
Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.41; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX. The Meet-the-Problem narrative is a teaching fiction grounded in the documented events of 1935.