The New Deal programs and agencies, created under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had a powerful impact on the relationship of government to the people of the United States. Yet a study of New Deal programs often leaves the student with a disconnected list of 'alphabet soup' programs and no real grasp of the impact of the New Deal.

This lesson takes a student through a process of examining primary sources, both photographs and life histories, to develop a sense of the profound impact the Great Depression had on real people’s lives. Then after studying New Deal Programs, students apply what they’ve learned to improve the situations of those people, whose life history interviews they have read. They synthesize the information gathered into an essay which has both an expository and a creative component.

For 10th grade students.

This is a collection of 900 boldly colored and graphically diverse posters produced as part of FDR's New Deal. These striking silkscreens, lithographs, and woodcuts were created to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities.

This lesson explores the important Constitutional mechanism providing for the separation of powers of government among three branches so that each branch checks the other two. Lesson plans use the New Deal to help teach this concept.

Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections is a multiformat ethnographic field collection documenting African-American, Arabic, Bahamian, British-American, Cuban, Greek, Italian, Minorcan, Seminole, and Slavic cultures throughout Florida. Recorded by Robert Cook, Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Stetson Kennedy, Alton Morris, and others in conjunction with the Florida Federal Writers' Project, the Florida Music Project, and the Joint Committee on Folk Arts of the Work Projects Administration, it features folksongs and folktales in many languages, including blues and work songs from menhaden fishing boats, railroad gangs, and turpentine camps; children's songs, dance music, and religious music of many cultures; and interviews, also known as "life histories." The online presentation provides access to 376 sound recordings and 106 accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcriptions, correspondence between Florida WPA workers and Library of Congress personnel, and an essay on Florida folklife by Zora Neale Hurston. A new essay by Stetson Kennedy reflects on the labor and the legacy of the WPA in Florida, and an extensive bibliography, a list of related Web sites, and a guide to the ethnic and language groups of Florida add further context to the New Deal era and to Florida culture. This online collection is made possible by the generous support of The Texaco Foundation.

This lesson asks students to research a modern government program having roots in the New Deal. Following their research, students participate in a congressional forum where they debate which programs should be continued. Recommended for grade 11, can be adapted for other grades.

In this lesson, students will study photographs of tobacco bag stringers in rural North Carolina, taken to illustrate the report the Virginia-Carolina Service Corporation prepared for Congress in 1939. Students will critically analyze the photographs, making observations about the content of the images, their reactions to them, and what they tell us about the Great Depression. These observations will be structured into a "Know/Want to Know/Learned" chart, in which students will record their prior knowledge about the Great Depression, the New Deal and its effects on rural Americans, information they would like to learn about the topic, and what they learned about the Depression and its impact.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (photographed in 1935 with his wife, Eleanor) created the New Deal as a solution for bringing the United States out of the Great Depression. The New Deal created a new role for the federal government, one that involved infusing money into the economy largely through the creation of new jobs and social programs. One photograph shows Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act of 1935, which was designed to keep citizens from becoming destitute. The New Deal also created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which funded artists to create public art projects and others to complete a wide variety of work projects, such as the construction of roads, trails, theaters, and public buildings. Several images show the wide variety of work that the WPA helped fund: an artist painting a mural, a man tending a butterfly collection in the Natural History Museum, and people clipping articles. Not everyone supported the government's new, expanded role. The image of men holding a banner that reads "Against Roosevelt's New Deal" was taken at a Communist demonstration in San Diego in 1933. Still others created their own solution to the Depression's hard times by forming cooperative organizations. The aim of the co-op movement was for people to work together and share the proceeds of their labors. In the early years of the Depression in California, many sorts of self-help cooperatives were formed by individuals (often called "cooperators"). The images in this group show cooperative pie-making, sewing and quilting ventures, and a cooperative barber shop, art studio, construction enterprises, and cannery.

This course will introduce the student to United States history from the end of the Civil War to the present era. The student will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place in America during this 150-year period. By the end of the course, the student will understand how the United States grew from a relatively weak and divided agricultural nation into a cohesive military and industrial superpower by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to: Identify the objectives of presidential and congressional Reconstruction following the Civil War and assess the impact of Reconstruction on Caucasian and African-American residents of the American South; Identify the origins of industrialization in the United States and assess its impact on native-born Americans and immigrants in the post-Civil War era; Compare and contrast American settlement of the trans-Mississippi West in the post-Civil War era with American economic expansion into Latin America and the Pacific Ocean in the late nineteenth century; Identify the origins of political and social reform movements in the United States in the late nineteenth century and assess how these movements altered political, economic, and social life throughout the United States in the early twentieth century; Describe how and why America became involved in World War I and assess the impact of American involvement on the postwar peace settlement; Explain how the Great Depression and World War II reshaped American society and politics; Explain how the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement altered America's standing in the global community and reshaped political and social institutions at home; Identify the origins of American military involvement in Vietnam and assess how the war led to social, political, and economic turmoil throughout the United States in the 1960s and 1970s; Explain America's place within the global community and evaluate how political and social trends in the 1980s and 1990s have shaped contemporary life in the United States; Analyze and interpret primary source documents from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, using historical research methods. (History 212)

This lesson invites students to interview imaginary North Carolina residents who lived during the Reconstruction and Depression eras. Each interview is historically accurate and supports a thesis that answers a question: Was the New Deal North Carolina's Reconstruction? This site includes more than two dozen examples of student interviews.

This site presents thousands of images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project, established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Featured here are stage and costume designs, still photographs, posters, scripts and administrative documents.

New Deal arts projects were guided by two novel assumptions: artists were workers and art was cultural labor worthy of government support. That commitment was demonstrated most dramatically in the Federal Art Project (FAP), a relief program for depression-era artists. Some painters and sculptors continued working in their studios with the assistance of relief checks and the occasional supervision of WPA administrators--their work was placed in libraries, schools, and other public buildings. Others lent their talents to community art centers that made art training and appreciation accessible to wider audiences. FAP also sponsored hundreds of murals and sculptures designed for municipal buildings and public spaces. In essays written as part of the New Deal's documentation of its own efforts, artist Louis Guglielmi found the social consciousness of the 1930s and the support of the New Deal a spur to his artistic development. Artist Julius Bloch praised the FAP for bringing art to new audiences, including his African-American subjects.

Aims to develop a teaching knowledge of the field through extensive reading and discussion of major works. The reading covers a broad range of topics -- political, economic, social, and cultural -- and represents a variety of historical methods. Students make frequent oral presentations and prepare a 20-page review essay.

Teacher's Guide for using the American Roots Music documentary series in the classroom. The resources offered here are designed to help you use the PBS American Roots Music video series and companion Web site in middle school and high school social studies and history classes. American Roots Music may be taped off-air and used for up to a year following broadcast, or you may choose to purchase it through Shop PBS for Teachers.

In this activity, students will read background information on tobacco bag stringing, and will be asked to analyze reports, worker profiles, and letters from the Tobacco Bag Stringing collection. They will respond by composing their own letter to President Roosevelt, supporting or opposing an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards act.

The student project will demonstrate mastery of a variety of objectives, including creative writing, historical appreciation and criticism, recognition of bias, and incorporation of text and illustration reflecting primary source research.