Thursday, July 15, 2010 3:41 AM
My grandpa owned a tavern in Milwaukee. During prohibition, many of the taverns became "malt shops". During that time my other Grandpa (also in Milwaukee) was approached by a member of Al Capone's "team"- as were many men during that time, to drive a truck for them to transport "freight". (he said no BTW). One of my uncle's was in the CCC helping to support my grandparents and his siblings. While the "alphabet agencies" overall did little to help the economy grow, it did help millions of families to survive (Such a concept - to EARN money from the government instead of standing there with a hand out).
I shared the above with my class after we read a short story that took place during the depression. They had a lot of questions, so we made a list of the questions and broke into groups to find answers to them. After identifying sources where we could find answers to the questions, we did the following:
Step 1: Each group found answers to the question they were assigned using at least three resources.
Step 2: They spent another period consolidating facts in the form of bullet points under their assigned question
Step 3: As individuals, they each wrote a paragraph about their topic.
Step 4: Each student wrote a paragraph using the notes they had gathered about their question.
Step 5: They shared their paragraphs with each other and then wrote one group paragraph and submitted it to me.
Step 6: I put all the paragraphs together and as a group we formulated an introduction and a conclusion
The above took about eight class periods, but served as a great introduction to writing a research report on a topic of their choosing.