‹ Dust and Drought, 1935 (unit home)
③ Transfer · Solve the problem

Phase 3 — Meet the problem

⛔ Gate check: only open this phase once students have finished Surface and Deep. This is where they transfer everything they built into a real, messy decision.

This is Problem-Based Learning. Students don't answer questions about the Dust Bowl — they step inside the problem as stakeholders on the Texas High Plains in 1935, and the teacher guides rather than tells. The whole phase runs the problem-solving process named in §113.19(c)(23)(B).

Problem-solving teaching · d 0.61§113.19(c)(7), (c)(23)(B)

Step 1 · Meet the Problem

Read the narrative aloud. Read it once for the story, then again for details students will need.

It is the spring of 1935 on the Texas High Plains, north of Amarillo. For four years the rains have failed. The wheat your family plowed and sowed came up thin and then died brown in the field. Yesterday another black blizzard rolled in from the north — a wall of dust taller than the barn that turned noon into midnight. This morning you dug drifts of grit from the windowsills and the little ones are coughing.

The bank in town holds the mortgage on the farm, and the note is past due. Wheat sells for almost nothing now, so there is no way to pay. A letter from a cousin in California says there is work picking fruit out west, and a battered truck could carry the family there in a week.

But your grandparents broke this ground; leaving would mean losing it for good. A man from the government has been driving the county, telling farmers that contour plowing, cover crops, and letting some grassland heal could hold the soil — if enough neighbors do it together, and if the rains ever return.

Around the supper table the family argues. What should your family do — and what should the community and government do about the Dust Bowl?

First reaction (not answers yet): what did you notice? What do you wonder? Keep it open — the point is to pull students into the problem.

🌵 What really happened: Handbook of Texas · Dust Bowl ↗ (§113.19(c)(7)).

Multiple perspectives · d 0.75§113.19(c)(16)

Step 2 · Take a stakeholder role

Assign or let students choose a stakeholder. Each will reason from that person's point of view. Every role has something real at stake.

🌾 The struggling farm family

Your farm is failing and the little ones are sick from the dust. Do you leave for California, stay and change how you farm, or wait for the rains?

🏦 The banker holding the mortgage

You lent the money and depositors trust you to protect it. How long can you wait on an unpaid note — and is foreclosing on your neighbors the only choice?

🌱 The soil-conservation agent

You believe contour plowing, cover crops, and healing grassland can save the land — but only if many farmers act together. How do you convince a desperate, doubtful community?

🏪 The shopkeeper in the drying-up town

Your customers are broke or leaving, and Main Street is emptying out. What keeps the town alive when the farms fail?

🚚 The young person who wants to leave

You see no future in the dust and want to head west for work and a fresh start. Is leaving giving up — or is it the smart, brave choice?

🏛️ The county / government official

You must decide what help to offer — relief, loans, conservation programs — with limited money and many needy families. How do you spend it to do the most good?

Problem-based learning · d 0.53§113.19(c)(23)(B), (c)(20)

Step 3 · Hunches → Know → Need-to-Know

Build three shared columns on chart paper. This defines the problem and plans the inquiry — the first moves of §113.19(c)(23)(B).

💭 Hunches✅ Know (from the text)❓ Need to know
Our guesses about what is happening and what might help. Facts we can point to in the story (it's 1935; four years of drought; the bank may foreclose; there's work in California; a conservation agent is offering new methods). Questions we must answer to help — How bad was the drought? Did the new farming methods actually work? What happened to families who left for California? What help did the government offer, and to whom?

Turn “Need to know” into the H of KWHL: How will we find out? (which sources, whom to ask). Record it — this is the class's research plan.

Transfer strategies · d 0.75§113.19(c)(20), (c)(21)

Step 4 · Inquiry & investigation

Groups pursue their “Need to know” questions using vetted sources (see the facilitator guide for suggested Texas .gov / .org / .edu sources). Students gather and use valid information, applying the source routine they practiced in Phase 2. Keep filling the Learned column of KWHL as answers come in.

Teacher-as-guide moves: answer a question with a question; point to a source, not the answer; ask “How do you know?” and “Whose view is missing?”

📚 Investigation sources: Handbook of Texas · Dust Bowl ↗ · Great Depression ↗ · Portal to Texas History · Dust Bowl ↗ · LoC · Dust Bowl Migration ↗ · National Archives · DocsTeach: Great Depression ↗. Full list + how-to in the facilitator guide.

Weigh & choose · d 0.75§113.19(c)(23)(B), (c)(20)

Step 5 · Propose & defend a solution

From their stakeholder's point of view, each group develops a recommendation for what the family should do AND what the community and government should do about the Dust Bowl — and defends it with evidence. Assessment happens throughout the process, not only here (the reasoning is the point).

Groups present an 8-part problem/solution brief (poster, slides, or spoken):

  1. Title & group members (and your stakeholder role)
  2. What is the problem?
  3. Why is it a problem — and for whom?
  4. Who are the stakeholders?
  5. Options we considered (advantages & disadvantages of each)
  6. Our recommended solution
  7. The evidence and sources behind it
  8. How we'd know if it worked
Evaluation & reflection · d 0.75§113.19(c)(23)(B), (c)(16)

Step 6 · Debrief & metacognition

Close the loop — the evaluate step of the problem-solving process. Discuss across roles so students hear how the same disaster looked from every side.

Connect to what actually happened & to the standards: in real life the Dust Bowl drove many families to migrate west, spurred new soil-conservation methods and government programs that changed how the Plains were farmed, and eased only when the rains eventually returned in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Name the steps students just used — that is §113.19(c)(23)(B).

🌱 Migration & conservation: LoC · Dust Bowl Migration ↗ · Handbook of Texas · Soil & Water Conservation ↗

🧑‍🏫 Facilitator guide & sources ✅ Assessment pack
‹ Phase 2 — Deep Unit home

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.