The Great Depression in the United States

The through-line

Was the prosperity of the 1920s real — and once it collapsed, whose response actually worked?

Content overview

The unit opens on method rather than content: what a historian is, whether objectivity is possible, and OPVL as the tool for interrogating a source. That frame then runs through everything else — four lessons on the 1920s asking whether the boom was genuine or an illusion and for whom, the farmers already outside it, the Crash itself, Hoover's response and its critics, FDR's first hundred days and the alphabet agencies, the New Deal's racial limits in the CCC, and finally the historians themselves disagreeing about all of it.

How to use the lesson pages

• Fifteen lessons from fourteen day labels. The source's numbering is broken, so the pages are renumbered contiguously: Lessons 1–4 are the source's Days 1–4; Lesson 5 is its first "Day 5" (dated 9/8–9/9) and Lesson 6 is its second "Day 5" (9/10–9/11); Lessons 7–12 are its Days 6–11; Lesson 13 is its Day 13; Lesson 14 is the first of its two "Day 14" entries, the one marked "Option A / Extension / Lab"; and Lesson 15 is the second. The source has no Day 12.
• Each lesson offers two shapes — a 90-minute block and a short period — matching the course's A/B block schedule. Only the block condition is timed.
• Only Lesson 1 carries real timings. Its source states them per move (0–10, 10–20, 20–45, 45–65, 65–80, 80–90), and those are used verbatim. Every other lesson's minutes are estimates, and each of those pages says so.
• Lesson 14 is elective. The source marks it "Option A / Extension / Lab" rather than a fixed day, even though it carries a full set of objectives, an essential question and three key questions. Plan it in or out deliberately.
• Four lessons carry almost the same title. The source names its Days 3, 4 and both Day 5s some variant of "The Twenties: Duality and Instability", so Lessons 3–6 read as Pt. 1 through Pt. 4 — the source's own convention, extended. The blurbs, not the titles, tell them apart. Renaming them to distinct concepts would read better and is a quick edit.
• Resources repeat heavily across days. The 1920s presentation, the "Activities - 00a" group document, the Republican Leaflet pairing and the "Why did the Wall Street crash?" documentary each appear on several consecutive lessons, and the documentary is split by timecode (4:00–27:00 early, 27:00 to the end on Lesson 8). Each lesson lists what its own day named; the materials list on this page dedupes by link.
• Dates on the page are unreliable and none of them are printed on the lesson pages. Day 1's header reads "Tuesday 9/26" although the source's Day 5 is 9/8 and its Day 10 is 10/1; one homework carries "(9/22/23)" on a page headed 2025-2026; and a group task links a "2024-2025 Rosters" document. Check the calendar rather than the page.
• Three things the source deliberately leaves blank, and they stay blank: the unit test's two dates ("A-____, B-_____" on Lesson 15), a homework due date ("Due End of Next Week (__________)" on Lesson 5), and the third chapter reading below, which is named with no link.
• No standards codes. This is an IB course; the page carries none, and the NC codes used elsewhere in this repo do not apply.
• Lessons 13, 14 and 15 handle the New Deal's racial limits and the historiographical fight over whether it worked at all — the CCC's treatment of Black workers, the argument that the New Deal widened racial inequality, and Degler against Bernstein. The pages present the linked sources as material to weigh, which is what the source does and what the IB assessment actually asks for.