Idaho Social Studies 9-12.US2.11

Social StudiesGrades 9–12United States History II

The Standard

Analyze the causes of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

Idaho Content Standards: K-12 Social Studies · The Great Depression and the New Deal 1929-1939

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students explain why stock prices collapsed in 1929 and why the downturn spread beyond Wall Street. They connect buying on margin, weak consumer buying power, bank failures, and falling spending to business closures and lost jobs.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can explain how buying on margin made stock losses worse and how bank failures cut off credit. They can show how falling sales and layoffs fed each other, without claiming the crash alone caused the Depression.
Common Misconceptions: Students may think every family owned stocks or that the crash alone caused the Depression. They may also think bank runs happened only because banks had lost money, missing how mass withdrawals created cash shortages.
How to Assess It: Exit ticket: In three sentences, explain how buying on margin worsened the crash and how one separate problem helped turn the downturn into a depression.

Lesson moves

Give groups three cash tokens and ten deposit slips, then have six depositors demand cash and record what happens.
Write three sentences connecting a bank failure to a factory layoff, then explain why the crash alone cannot account for the Depression.
Sort cards labeled buying on margin, bank runs, falling sales, and layoffs into causes and effects, then draw arrows between them.
Show an FDIC sign from a bank website, then ask how insured deposits might change a 1930 bank run.

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A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 9-12.US2.11, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

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