Introduction

Unit Introduction

The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression

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STANDARD 1: Students read and understand a variety of materials. STANDARD 2: Students write and speak for a variety of purposes and audiences. STANDARD 6: Students read and recognize literature as a record of human experience.  __Objective:__ The learner will gain background knowledge on the Great Depression and/or the Dust Bowl by reading Primary Source documents and creating Found Poetry to synthesize learning.

Choose one of the Primary Source documents below. 

**Found Poem Instructions**

1. Carefully read the text you have chosen, and look for 50–100 words that stand out in the passage. Highlight or underline details, words and phrases that you find particularly powerful, moving, or interesting. Note especially examples that reflect The Great Depression.

2. On a separate sheet of paper, make a list of the details, words and phrases you underlined, keeping them in the order that you found them. Double space between lines so that the lines are easy to work with. Feel free to add others that you notice as you go through the text again.

3. Look back over your list and cut out everything that is dull, or unnecessary, or that just doesn’t seem right for a poem about The Great Depression. Try to cut your original list in half.

4. As you look over the shortened list, think about the tone that the details and diction convey. The words should all relate to The Great Depression, since you are creating a poem on this subject. Make sure that you have words that communicate the emotions or struggles of the person in the text.

5. Make any minor changes necessary to create your poem. You can change punctuation and make little changes to the words to make them fit together (such as change the tenses, possessives, plurals, and capitalizations).

6. When you’re close to an edited down version, if you absolutely need to add a word or two to make the poem flow more smoothly, to make sense, to make a point, //you may add up to two words of your own//. That’s two (2) and only two!

7. Read back over your edited draft one more time and make any deletions or minor changes.

8. Check the words and choose a title—is there a better title than “Found Poem”?

9. At the bottom of the poem, tell where the words in the poem came from. For example, From “In Lieu of Something Better” by Miss Minnie Stonestreet, on [|American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940] on American Memory Web Site.

**__Assessment:__** **5:** **3:**  **1:**
 * 50-100 Words
 * Clearly Presented
 * 25-49 Words
 * Presented
 * 0-24 Words
 * Not Presented