Notebook

Stock Market Report

Journal-Scrapbook

• Creating Your Character

Literature

• The Great Gatsby

• Inherit the Wind
• Cast

• The Grapes of Wrath

Links

 Our next area of focus in Humanities will be: Boom to Bust: from the Jazz Age to the Depression Years.  The era of the 20's and the 30's, a period sandwiched between two world wars, held great change for Americans. As we explore each of these very different decades, we will be investigating the changes for women, young people, workers, African-Americans, government, and all Americans affected by the fads, fashions, music, art, literature, politics and economics of the time. As we learn about this turbulent era, we will grapple with the following essential question:  How did the 20's and 30's affect Americans?

How will we get there?

 As we explore the essential question, we will immerse ourselves in the events, the personalities, the beliefs, the music, literature and art of the period. We will see documentaries and feature films about the 20's and 30's. We will listen to jazz and blues and swing. We will read novels (The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath), a play (Inherit the Wind),poetry and essays from the era. We will look at photographs and paintings. We will invest in (well, okay... only with play money) and learn about the stock market. We will participate in simulations. We will explore our history textbook and Internet sources. We will research, talk, listen and think about the history of the Jazz Age and the Depression years.

How will we know when we've arrived?

 You will exhibit knowledge and skills gained during the unit by: 

• participating in Socratic Seminars, completing assignments based on the assigned literature, and writing essays which explore the meaning of poems, short stories or novels.

• reporting on results of five or six weeks of "investing" in the stock market;

• maintaining a notebook of Jazz Age/Depression Era assignments;

• creating a journal/scrapbook of the events and actitivities of the 20's (before the end of the fall semester) and 30's (first part of the spring semester) that a fictitious individual of the time period might have kept.

• completing written assessments of unit knowledge at the end of each section.