Indiana Social Studies IS.1.25
The Standard
Summarize key economic and social developments and changes in post-WWII life in Indiana.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies · Post-War Indiana: 1945 to 1960
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students describe how factory jobs and farm machines changed work in Indiana after World War II. They connect those changes to suburban housing, car use, growing schools, and unequal access to new homes.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can explain how factory wages and cars helped some families move to suburbs, while the baby boom filled classrooms. They can also name housing discrimination as a reason some Black families could not make the same move.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume everyone left farms or gained a factory job. They may also describe suburban growth as a choice open to all families, overlooking discrimination in home buying.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: An Indiana factory worker buys a car and moves outside the city in the 1950s. Name one change in work that helped make this possible, one effect on daily life, and one barrier another family might face.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs cards labeled factory hiring, new tractors, suburban homes, and crowded schools; have them sort work and daily life changes, then draw two cause and effect arrows.
Ask: How might a factory paycheck change an Indiana family's housing and school choices, and who might still be shut out?
Play a matching round with cards pairing farm machines with fewer farm workers, the baby boom with fuller classrooms, and cars with longer commutes.
Use a real estate listing for a 1950s Indiana ranch house; students identify the garage and explain how car ownership shaped suburban homes.
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Printable IS.1.25 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to IS.1.25, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- IS.1.9
Explain key ideas, movements, and inventions and summarize their impact on rural and urban communities throughout Indiana.
- IS.1.17
Identify the social, political, economic, and cultural movements of the 1920s and analyze how these movements reflected and shaped Indiana society.
- 4.H.11
Identify and describe important events and movements that changed life in Indiana from the mid-twentieth century to the present.
- 4.H.9
Identify and describe important events and movements that changed life in Indiana in the early twentieth century.
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