National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)

THEME VII:

PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, & CONSUMPTION

The Legacy of the Great Depression

Description: Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how people organize for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Because people have wants that often exceed the resources available to them, a variety of ways have evolved to answer such questions as: What is to be produced? How is production to be organized? How are goods and services to be distributed? What is the most effective allocation of the factors to be produced (land, labor, capital and management)?

Reflection:

Production, distribution, and consumption provide questions that focus on quantities of production, how it is distributed, and the demand for consuming a good. How much of something needs to be produced in order to meet the consumption needs of the population? What happens if the economy does not allow for the production of goods? What if there is no demand for a certain product because it is over produced? These are just the few questions that I took away from this theme while implementing it into my lesson plan covering the impacts and effects of the great depression on a global scale since the great depression not only affected the United States, but it was also a global epidemic.

I thought I was successful with this lesson because I steered away from lecture mode and had student read about the great depression from an article I found on the internet that focused on the causes. I had students read the article silently to themselves. While they were reading they were to highlight and make notes of certain areas of the article they don’t understand such as concepts, ideas, and words they don’t know the meanings to. Once students were finished reading, they were to have written down questions they would like clarified. They began to ask their questions after a specific time limit. This lesson was also successful because I was able to anticipate the level of questions they were going to ask such as what is buying on a margin, why were people allowed to buy on credit, what does coalescing mean, and what are tariffs. I had a good question framework that focused on the level of understanding students had based on the article they read. Furthermore, I used an example of buying on a margin and had three students come up to the front of the class representing a buyer, a broker, and the bank. This gave this theme more relevance and better understanding.

Overall, I feel as though my planning and being able to anticipate the kinds of questions students were most likely to ask was successful for this particular theme to work within my lesson plan. In the future, I plan to continue to evolve within this theme in trying to work on making it more relevant to students. Although the questions students asked were good, I want the further ability to make it more personal.