Multi-Genre Research Project
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Multi-Genre Research Project
We are starting a unique research assignment that will last until Spring Break. During this
project, you will research the Great Depression/1930s. With that research, you will create
multiple pieces of writing and projects that will reflect what you learned about the time period.
All work can be created in the classroom and the computer labs, but some projects will be better
suited to do outside of school. The final product will be submitted in electronic format (except
possibly some artistic pieces). As we are working on it, you should save all drafts to your H
drive (unique to your student ID), so you can access it from any computer in the school.
Here are the requirements for the project:
Required Pieces:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Choice Pieces:
Table of contents
Descriptive Diary Entry
Letter
Narrative Piece
Bibliography
1. Technology related
- powerpoint
-prezi
-glogster
-piclit.com
2. Collage of images/mural
3. Postcard
4. Wordsearch
5. Crossword
6. Comic Strip
7. Front Page News
8. Advertisement
9. Oral History
10. Drama/Skit
11. Book Review
12. Music Video
13. Alphabet Agency Poster
Grading Specifics For This Project:
5 Entries = C
7 Entries = B
9 Entries = A
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Introduce project,
various activities
Various Intro
Activities
Various Intro
Activities
Various Intro
Activities
Various Intro
Activities
Lab for Research
Lab to type
Lab for Reasearch
Lab to type
Work in class
Dodgeball
Work in class
Lab to type
Project Due!
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Required Pieces
1. Table of Contents
Make a typed list of all parts in the project. This is your first page and should have
your name.
2. Descriptive Diary Entry
Create entries in the diary of a teenager living in the Depression. As this teenager,
you are part of an extended family living in Oklahoma (be specific what part of the
state you choose to be from). Your family includes one grandparent, two parents,
three children – yourself at whatever age you really are, one sibling that is 10 or
younger, and one sibling that is 19 or older. You must have 5 entries. They must
be in chronological order and seem as if you really lived in the 1930s. Consider
including the following topics: hardships endured by families during the Great
Depression, effect of the Depression on rural areas, support or opposition to the
election of FDR, changes in the way people lived during the Depression, what life
was like for a teenager during these years.
3. Letter:
In friendly letter format, write a letter “back home” to the family you left behind
when you hopped a train and headed off to new adventures.
4. Narrative Piece:
Find at least one photograph (online) of a person or scene from the Great
Depression. You will write a story based on the photograph (s). Story should have
plot, setting, theme, character, a conflict that is resolved, and should be told from
either first or third person point of view. Include the photo with the story. Aim for
500-1000 words.
5. Bibliography:
This page will be the last page of your project and it will have all sources you used
for information including photographs. It must be in MLA format.
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Choice Pieces
1. Technology
Choose one of the following as a presentation tool to explain what you have learned about the
Great Depression
 Powerpoint- In a minimum of 5 slides, share what you learned in your research. Pictures
are encouraged!
 Prezi- Using the website www.prezi.com, create a presentation that can be shared with
the class.
 Piclit- Using www.piclits.com, create unique picture/writing/illustrating of a theme of the
1930s. You must have email to create an account.
 If you have another way to use technology and accomplish the same purpose, please ask
permission before proceeding.
2. Collage of images/mural
Create a collage of photos or draw/paint a mural that depicts life in the 1930’s. Can use any
medium. Pictures can be printed from the internet. Collage or mural should be on a half sheet
of poster board or a piece of 11 x 17 paper. See me for the paper. You are free to use bigger
paper, but you will need to get your own. Freezer paper works well for really big murals. Your
collage or mural should have a theme ( for example “women in the Depression” or “children in
the Depression” or “jobs in the depression” ) or should focus on a particular place. A mural
might also depict a progression of time, like a family moving from Oklahoma to California or a
family who loses its income and becomes dependent on others.
3. Postcard
In the style of a traditional postcard, write a brief message to a family member back home,
telling him/her about your adventures. Design a stamp and make up an address for the recipient.
On the front of a piece of typing paper, either draw a picture or print and paste a picture that
would be fitting for a postcard. Remember most postcards are pictures of places. To get ideas,
just google 1930’s postcards.
Stamp
Name of recipient
Address of recipient
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4. Word Search
Use a website like www.puzzlemaker.com to create a word search with a minimum of 20 terms
related to the Great Depression and the 1930s. You do not have to provide the key.
5. Crossword
Use a website like www.puzzlemaker.com to create a crossword puzzle with a minimum of 25
clues about the Great Depression and the 1930s. You do not have to provide the key.
6. Comic Strip
Using the format of a traditional newspaper comic strip, design one with a minimum of 5 boxes,
telling a story or revealing a theme of the time period we are studying. Keep in mind details like
authentic speech and dialect.
7. Front page News
Create the front page of a 1929 or 1930’s newspaper. You will need to include the following:
 Title of Newspaper, city, and date
 At least 1 short article that deals with the depression on a local level (for example, a
company laying off workers or problems with transients) – must have headline and a
quote from an imaginary local person
 At least 1 short article that deals with the depression on a national level
( for example,
the election of FDR or the stockmarket crash) - must have headline and quote or
statistic from one of your research articles
 At least 1 photograph (find this online)
You can do this digitaly or literally type and print your pieces and glue them to a big 11 x
17 page.
8. Advertisement
Create an ad for a newspaper or magazine. It should promote a product sold in the 1930’s. This
can be done on typing paper and be done by hand or can be digitial. It should have the following:
 Name of product
 What the product does
 Manufacturer
 Price
 Where to buy it
 Illustration
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9. Oral History
You will interview a relative, family friend, or anyone you know who grew up in the 1930’s.
You can either tape/video the interview or take good notes. Tips:
 Have at least 20 questions prepared before the interview. It is okay if you think up
more during the interview.
 Don’t interrupt; be polite and remember that elderly people sometimes talk slowly.
 Ask open-ended questions and allow the person to think before responding. For
example, don’t ask “Do you remember FDR?” Instead ask, “What did your
family think of FDR?”
 Your interview may have to take place in multiple sessions if the person is ill or
becomes tired.
After the interview, you will write a short biography about what this person’s life during the
depression. Be sure to explain who you interviewed in the introduction. It may be more in essay
form or more in narrative form, depending on the types of questions/answers you had. You will
also turn in a list of the questions you used.
10. Drama/Skit: This can be done individualy, but you may need to enlist some helpers for
this. You will write and act out a skit/drama. It may be filmed and burned to a DVD outside of
school OR you may perform it before the class.
 Must turn in written script
 Can be a monologue or have multiple characters.
 It should be at least 5 minutes long. No more than 15 mintues.
 Suggested topics: life in a Hooverville, workers being laid off, a family being
evicted, a family in the dust bowl, life on the road for a migrant
Consider the following info when writing:
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Setting
Characters
Conflict
Will you use any factual info?
How has the depression affected your characters?
Does your dialogue show the emotions of the characters?
Do you need props/costumes?
Do you need a background?
What message do you want the audience to walk away with?
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11. Book Review
Choose one of the books from the list below to use in a book review OR bring a different one to
me for approval. Book review should be in essay form and include the following:
 Author, Title, Number of pages
 A summary of the book
 Your reactions to the book (what you liked/did not like, would you recommend it)
 Lessons you learned about what life was like during the Great Depression and the
causes/effects of the Great Depression
 Should be approx. 300 words
Possible Books:
 A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories by Richard Peck
 Christmas After All: the Great Depression Diary of Minnie Switft by Kathryn Lasky
 Survival in the Storm: the Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards by Katelan Janke
 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
 Out of the Dust by Karen Hess
12. Music Video
Student should read labor songs from the 1920s and 1930s as research. Suggestions are music
from Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser’s Carry It On! (1985), Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer’s Songs of
Work and Freedom (1973), or look for something from Woody Guthrie. There are also good
options in Jazz and Blues from the late 1920s and into the 1930s.
After you researched songs, select at least two. Record yourself performing one song as it is
originally written. Re-write the second song and give it a modern feel by making it about issues
for workers today. You could even give it a updated feeling by making it rap, country, etc.
Record this song also. You will submit the recordings and a set of lyrics for both songs. Be sure
to include original authors and dates.
** 13. Alphabet Agency Poster
Create a poster that advertises one of the agencies created under FDR’s New Deal. Some of
those agencies are TVA, CCC, NRA (National Recovery Admin.), AAA (Agricultural
Adjustment Act) and WPA.
 Do on a sheet of typing paper.
 The poster should advertise the agency and what it’s purpose was.
 Needs an illustration, not just words.
 Can be done by hand or digitally.
 Include a paragraph of approx. 100 words that describes what this agency did to
help people and the country during the Great Depression
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Suggested Websites (look for sites ending in .gov, .org, .edu)
http://www.ushistory.org/us/48a.asp
Factual information about The Great Depression
http://www.ushistory.org/us//49.asp
Factual information about The New Deal
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/depression.htm
Factual information including phots about the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and Recovery Efforts
http://www.erroluys.com/frontpage.htm
Read articles on the survival of teenage hobos written by author Errol Lincoln Uys of Riding the
Rails.
http://www.monh.org/Default.aspx?tabid=405
"Teenage Hoboes in the Great Depression." Listen to oral histories and view images of former
transients from the National Heritage Museum's online exhibition.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_07.html
Listen to an interview with Walter Ballard, a former teenage hobo who left his impoverished family
to find work in the Great Plains.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fadocamer.html
"Documenting America." A photographic series from the Library of Congress featuring iconic
photos of migrant workers, farmers, and cities during the Great Depression
(from “Errol Lincoln Uys: a writer’s website” http://erroluys.com)
“From Then on I Was a Loner” by Gene Wadsworth, Sequim, Washington
When Gene Wadsworth caught his first freight at age 17 on a winter's night in 1932, he'd never ridden on
a train before. Orphaned at age 11, Gene was living at Burley, Idaho, with an uncle who had five children
of his own. "Why do you hang around here, when you're not wanted?" one of his cousins asked him. That
night, Gene stuffed his few belongings into a flour sack and hit the road.
"I was about as low as a kid could get, as I walked over the Snake River Bridge. I was thinking of suicide,
looking down into that black water, but I kept walking. A freight train was just pulling out of a little town.
I stopped to let it pass.
"I'll never know why I reached out and grabbed the rung of the boxcar ladder. I climbed to the catwalk. I
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lay on my stomach and hung on for dear life, as we rumbled off into the night. I was scared stiff."
Taking the advice of older hoboes, Gene headed south to warmer climes and transient camps established
by the government, where he could get work at $1 a week, plus food and shelter. Moving between camps
in California and Arizona, he made friends with a young man in the same position.
"Jim was also blond, my age and size - six feet and 165 pounds. Everyone believed we were brothers. We
thought a lot alike and hit it off very good. We teamed up and decided to make our fortune together.
"All went well with us, until one night when Jim and I were riding on the ladders between two boxcars.
"It was so cold my hands nearly froze. I slipped my arm over a rung of the ladder and put my hand in my
jacket pocket. Being back to back, I couldn't see Jim.
"All of a sudden the train gave a jerk, as it took up slack in the draw bars.
"I heard Jim let out a muffled moan, as he fell. I whirled round and made a grab for him. He had on a knit
cap. I got the cap and a handful of blond hair. Jim was gone. Disappeared under the wheels.
"No way could Jim survive. I got so sick I'd to climb up and lie on the catwalk.
"From then on, I was a loner. I never teamed up with anyone, but always traveled alone."
(from “Errol Lincoln Uys: a writer’s website” http://erroluys.com)
“Was I Leaving Little for Nothing?” By Leslie E. Paul, Seattle, Washington
Leslie E. Paul's vivid memories of leaving home in the summer of 1933 begin on the back porch of his
house in Duluth. He was 18 years old, newly graduated from high school, the son and stepson of railroad
men.
"I stepped off the porch and turned right. My eyes searched for the one-armed railroad dick, who'd
threatened to arrest me the next time I trespassed on railroad property. I was relieved when I didn't see
him.
"I stepped from tie to tie, past the cinder pit and around the turntable. High school had been out a
week, but I recognized a string of boxcars that had been there for days. I walked past the last boxcar,
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one hundred yards on to a pile of switch ties that stood parallel to the tracks. Each day for two weeks,
going to school and coming home, I'd wondered what was in the bundle lying on the pile.
"I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a blanket sewn together to make a sleeping bag. A hobo had
dropped it there.
"I knew then what I must do. It was the Depression; there was no work. I was a burden to Mother and
Gus, my step-father. I took the blanket and hurried home. I said nothing to Mother then, only that I
was going down to Scott's to get a flat fifty box of cigarettes. Ordinarily I was reluctant to add to the
delinquent account; today I found abundant courage. Besides the tin of cigarettes, I asked for two sacks
of Golden Grain. 'Charge it,' I said. Scott looked taken aback but said nothing.
"I returned home and told Mother I was leaving. She didn't fight it, but she was sad. Mother owned no
suitcase or tote. All she had was a black satin bag, the size of a pillow case. I jammed my new sleeping
bag inside it, three or four pairs of socks, shorts, an old sweater, the cigarettes and sacks of Golden
Grain.
"Mother made two sandwiches. She went to her purse and gave me all the money she had: 72 cents.
"I gave Mother a big kiss and a long, tight hug. She said nothing, but the tears streamed down her face.
I turned and left, the black satin bag over my shoulder. Had I been brave enough, I would've been
coward enough to go back.
"I stopped at the roundhouse and found Gus working on one of the engines. Gus hadn't really been a
father, but I owed him a lot. I had a roof over my head and there was always something to eat. I shook
his hand and said goodbye.
"The freight yard was a terminal for trains going to Canada. My best bet was to go to Carleton, 19
miles away. The easiest way to get there was to walk.
"I crossed the tracks, climbed the fence and started up the hill to the highway. I turned around at the
top. The tears came then, and one sob. The second one I swallowed. Every boy becomes a man, some
younger, some older. I was eighteen and one week. Was I leaving little for nothing?"
“Added Obstacles for African Americans”
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(From the website The American Experience - Website ©1996-2010 WGBH Educational
Foundation. This site is produced for PBS by WGBH.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/rails-added-obstacles/)
Clarence Lee was 16 in 1929 when his father informed him that he would have to leave home.
Times were tough and there was only so much food to go around. "Go fend for yourself," Lee's
father instructed him. "I cannot afford to have you around any longer." Lee reluctantly hopped a
freight car out of Louisiana in hopes of realizing better days. What he found instead was the
prevailing loneliness of hobo life: wandering from place to place looking for work, food, and shelter.
Added to his plight was the fact that Lee's skin color made him suspect in the eyes of many of the
folks he met along the road. He recalled how white hobos were treated differently than African
American hobos when it came to soliciting the kindness of strangers. "White kids, they fared better.
They might let them stay in a house with them, but me, I could sleep in a barn with the mules and the
hay."
While tales of friendships among hobos that transcended race abound, many African American
hobos recounted being made to feel like outcasts among outcasts. Harold Jeffries of Chicago recalls
how he first felt the sting of racism when he and six buddies took to the tracks out of Minneapolis in
1935:
"As black kids from the north, we'd heard of racial discrimination, but not one of us had actual
experience of harsh prejudice. Our first frightening encounter came at the Union Pacific roundhouse
in Kansas City. Some of the kids drank from a 'whites only' fountain. We were literally run out of the
U.P. yards. We walked across the long bridge from the Kansas side of the city over to Missouri to
see a girl I'd met back home. We told her family what had happened in the U.P. yards. They sat us
down and gave us a lecture about the ways of the South."
Sadly, one of the "ways of the South" was the brutal practice of lynching. As the Great Depression
rocked the economies of every state in the Union, jobs were scarce. Among African Americans,
unemployment reached a staggering fifty percent. Even so-called menial jobs were now eagerly
sought after. In many cities, whites demanded that they be given first crack at any job openings by
virtue of their skin color. Some went so far as to revive lynchings as a way of intimidating
employers and African Americans looking for work. The New Republic, reporting on the increase in
the number of lynchings in the South, observed that "dead men not only tell no tales but create
vacancies." Lynchings were also used to enforce mob justice. An African American hobo had to be
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aware of the racial climate in the towns he was traveling through. Sometimes, they were tipped off.
Clarence Lee recalls:
"I was leavin' from Baton Rouge to go to Denham Springs, Louisiana, and this man made one stop
in between. He had a small station place and somebody got on the train and was talking to the
conductor and he says, 'Well, that boy has to be put off here. They're going to lynch him. See, there
has been a rape between here and Denham Springs, and he fits the description.' So he put me off
right in the middle of a swamp. Probably saved my life."
Through his fiction, esteemed author Ralph Ellison recounted his experiences as an African
American riding the rails. In 1933, Ellison earned a scholarship to the Tuskegee Institute to study
music. Because he could not afford train fare to make the journey from his home in Oklahoma City
to Alabama, he resorted to hopping freights. In his short story, "I Did Not Learn Their Names," he
writes of confronting fellow hobos whose bigoted attitudes where passed down to them from their
elders. "I was having a hard time trying not to hate in those days, and I felt bad whenever I found
myself in a position that might have been interpreted that way. But I had learned not to attack those
who were not personally aggressive and who only expressed passively what they had been taught."
Still, Ellison's acquiescence would only go so far. As a fellow traveler among the wandering and the
wounded, he refused to quietly take his "place." He wrote, "I had learned that on the road you really
had no 'place'; you were all the same though some of them did not understand that."
For many hobos, however, life on the road -- and often on the run -- engendered a greater
understanding of the plight of African Americans and others looked down upon by certain sectors of
society. "Steam Train" Maury Graham, who began his hoboing days in 1931 when he was fourteen,
points out that "having experienced the intolerance of those who despised hobos, the 'bo tended to
make the acceptance of others -- no matter what their color -- a legacy that they hoped would be
passed on to everyone."
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“Women and the Great Depression” by Susan Ware
( from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/great-dpression/essays/women-and-great-depression )
In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt’s It’s Up to the Women exhorted American women to help pull the
country through its current economic crisis, the gravest it had ever faced: “The women know that life
must go on and that the needs of life must be met and it is their courage and determination which,
time and again, have pulled us through worse crises than the present one.” While women as a group
could not end the Depression (mobilization for World War II deserves that credit), the country could
never have survived the crisis without women’s contributions.
“We didn’t go hungry, but we lived lean.” That expression sums up the experiences of many
American families during the 1930s: they avoided stark deprivation but still struggled to get by. The
typical woman in the 1930s had a husband who was still employed, although he had probably taken
a pay cut to keep his job; if the man lost his job, the family often had enough resources to survive
without going on relief or losing all its possessions. Still, Eleanor Roosevelt noted, “Practically
every woman, whether she is rich or poor, is facing today a reduction of income.” In 1935–1936 the
median family income was $1160, which translated into $20–25 a week to cover all their expenses,
including food, shelter, clothing, and perhaps an occasional treat like going to the movies. Women
“made do” by substituting their own labor for something that previously had been bought with cash
or by practicing petty economies like buying day-old bread or warming several dishes in the oven to
save gas. Living so close to the edge, women prayed that no catastrophic accident or illness would
swamp their tight budgets. “We had no choice,” remembered one housewife. “We just did what had
to be done one day at a time.”
In many ways men and women experienced the Depression differently. Men were socialized to think
of themselves as breadwinners; when they lost their jobs or saw their incomes reduced, they felt like
failures because they couldn’t take care of their families. Women, on the other hand, saw their roles
in the household enhanced as they juggled to make ends meet. Sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd
noticed this trend in a study of Muncie, Indiana, published in 1937: “The men, cut adrift from their
usual routine, lost much of their sense of time and dawdled helplessly and dully about the streets;
while in the homes the women’s world remained largely intact and the round of cooking,
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housecleaning, and mending became if anything more absorbing.” To put it another way, no
housewife lost her job in the Depression.