Grade 7 · Texas History · §113.19 · Problem-Based Learning
Dust and Drought, 1935 — Stay or Go?
A Problem-Based Learning unit. Students step onto a failing farm on the Texas High Plains during the Dust Bowl, take on a stakeholder's point of view, and work a real, ill-structured question — building from surface to deep to transfer learning. The teacher is a guide, not the answer key.
Driving question: It is 1935 on the Texas High Plains. For years the rains have failed, the wheat has died, and enormous dust storms — “black blizzards” — bury fences and fill homes with grit. Your family's farm is failing and the bank may take it. Neighbors argue: leave for California, stay and change how you farm, or wait for the rains. What should your family do, and what should the community and government do about the Dust Bowl?
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: Environment and economy are linked. Drought, farming choices, and the Great Depression combined to create the Dust Bowl — forcing Texans into hard decisions and reshaping how people care for the land.
Know: what the Texas High Plains and its farm economy were like, how plowing up the grass plus drought and wind created the dust storms, and how the Great Depression made failing farms worse.
Understand: the same disaster looked different from each stakeholder's point of view — and people's choices about the land helped cause the crisis and helped answer it.
Do: run the problem-solving process end to end — define a problem, gather information, weigh options, choose and defend a solution, and evaluate it (§113.19(c)(23)(B)).
Standards this unit is aligned to (§113.19)
TEKS SE
Where it lives in the unit
(c)(6)–(c)(7)
20th-century Texas history — the Great Depression & its impact on Texas life — Surface facts, Deep concept map
(c)(9)
Human–environment interaction — how people's actions affected the land, and how they adapted — Deep concept map, Transfer inquiry
(c)(8) · (c)(10)
Regions, population distribution & migration — Surface map & data read, Deep concept map
(c)(11)(A–D)
Agrarian economy, physical-geographic factors, effects of limited resources, transportation & migration — Surface jigsaw, Deep map
(c)(16)
Importance of different points of view — Deep sources, Transfer roles
(c)(20) · (c)(21)
Analyze sources & points of view, claim + evidence; geographic & data tools — Deep & Transfer
(c)(23)(B)
The problem-solving 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-domain and Texas .gov / .org 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.
Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.19; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX. This scenario dramatizes the real Dust Bowl years on the Texas High Plains.