Before students can reason about the New Deal problem, they need the raw material: the vocabulary, the facts of the crash and the Depression, and the alphabet agencies. These three activities are fast and front-loaded — the goal is acquisition, not yet analysis.
Introduce and let students sort the unit vocabulary. Sort twice: first by "words about the crisis" vs. "words about the government's response," then by student-invented categories (feedback on their reasoning).
| Term | Working definition |
|---|---|
| Great Depression | the severe worldwide economic collapse of the 1930s, the worst in U.S. history |
| unemployment | the share of people who want work but cannot find it — about one in four Americans by 1933 |
| relief, recovery, reform — the "3 Rs" | the three goals of the New Deal: immediate relief for the suffering, recovery of the economy, and reform so it could not happen again |
| New Deal | Franklin Roosevelt's set of programs and agencies to fight the Depression |
| deficit spending | a government spending more than it collects, borrowing to fund programs |
| Social Security | the 1935 program of old-age insurance and aid funded by payroll taxes |
| laissez-faire | the belief that government should leave the economy largely alone |
| welfare state | a system in which government takes responsibility for citizens' basic economic security |
| alphabet agencies | the many New Deal programs known by initials — CCC, WPA, TVA, FDIC, SSA, and more |
| stakeholder | anyone who is affected by a decision or has something at stake in it |
📚 Background: Library of Congress · The Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945 ↗ — a concise, sourced overview that puts the vocabulary in context.
Split the class into four expert groups, each studying one topic below, then re-mix into home groups where every topic is represented. Each expert teaches their group. (Jigsaw is one of the highest-leverage surface moves precisely because students must teach.)
Sources for each expert group (free, reputable; confirm access through your district — links open in a new tab):
The stock market crashed in October 1929. Bank failures, overproduction, and shrinking demand turned it into a decade-long depression; by 1933 thousands of banks had closed and a quarter of workers had no job.
📄 Library of Congress · The Great Depression ↗
📄 FDR Presidential Library · Great Depression facts ↗
Drought and poor farming turned the Southern Plains into the Dust Bowl. Farms failed, families lost everything, and hundreds of thousands migrated west looking for work — the human face of the crisis.
📄 Library of Congress · Voices from the Dust Bowl ↗
📄 Library of Congress · The Great Depression ↗
President Hoover favored limited federal action; voters turned to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. In his first "Hundred Days" FDR pushed emergency laws through Congress and reassured the nation in radio "fireside chats."
📄 FDR Presidential Library · FDR and the New Deal ↗
📄 FDR Presidential Library · The Fireside Chats ↗
The New Deal built agencies known by their initials: the CCC put young men to work in nature; the WPA built roads and art; the TVA electrified a region; the FDIC insured bank deposits; the SSA created Social Security in 1935.
📄 FDR Presidential Library · FDR and the New Deal ↗
📄 Library of Congress · The New Deal ↗
Check for understanding: each home group writes two sentences answering "Give one cause of the Great Depression, and name one New Deal agency and the 'R' — relief, recovery, or reform — it served."
Using a simple unemployment table or line graph, students track the jobless rate from the 1929 crash through 1935: roughly 3% in 1929, a peak near 25% in 1933, easing toward the mid-teens by 1935 as New Deal programs took hold. Then students match each major agency — CCC, WPA, TVA, FDIC, SSA — to the "R" it served (relief, recovery, or reform) and to the people it helped.
Quick write: "Unemployment went from ______ in 1929 to about ______ in 1933. One agency that tried to fix this was ______, which served the goal of ______ (relief / recovery / reform) because ______."
📊 Data & sources: FDR Library · Great Depression facts (unemployment) ↗ · National Archives · DocsTeach: Great Depression & New Deal ↗
Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.41; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX.