The Experience:
During an interactive morning in-school field trip, students experienced, through the lens of various disciplines, how the Great Depression affected the lives of so many Americans. Ten different 23-minute interdisciplinary Middle Years Program (MYP) presentations allowed students to rotate through the art, economics, emotions, music, recreation, and photographs of that era.

Seen in the photos above, subject area teachers assisted the students in creating street art, being part of a 1930's family who needs to allocate their limited resources to their needs, the baking of a "wacky cake" with limited resources and ingredients, and analyzing the power of words through President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous speech, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Students looked at the stock market crash of 1929, its causes and factors, and conducted mathematical structured analysis to discuss "how a crash was not only possible but necessary."

Every subject area provided exploratory experiences for the students, as seen in the photos above. During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, thousands of settlers were lured to the Great Southern Plains by the promise of rich, plentiful soil. Using farming techniques better suited to the Northern and Eastern United States, farmers rapidly plowed millions of acres of grassland. Disaster struck when the rains stop in the summer of 1931 and was followed by eight years of catastrophic drought. The enormous “Black Blizzards” that resulted led observers to rename the region ‘The Dust Bowl.’ Students explored how the settlers endured such difficult times and how people of today could learn valuable lessons from those struggles.

In the photos above, and in the video, you can see how much the students enjoyed and learned through this trip back in time, as Family and Consumer Science educators helped students step back in time as they guided the students in making a "Wacky Cake," a moist chocolate cake prepared without eggs or butter, reflecting how cooks and home economists used their ingenuity to create dishes with limited ingredients. Physical education teachers explored the games of the era, jacks, stickball, and hopscotch. We hope you enjoy your own interactive experience through this site!

BACKGROUND:    

 In June of 2009, Commack Middle School became the first middle school on Long Island to be authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program, as part of the IB World School. The MYP program, offers a rigorous, age appropriate framework for learning that helps student develop the habits of mind and skills necessary for active participation in their local and global communities. Five areas of interaction are used to help students make connections to their own lives and across subject areas. The five areas of interaction (environments, community and service, human ingenuity, approaches to learning, and health and social education) are lenses through which the traditional curriculum is presented. The program utilizes the IB Learner Profile to encourage students to develop social and emotional skills as well as academic ones. The event focuses on the Great Depression Era.

For more info on the MYP Program, http://www.commack.k12.ny.us/cms/departments&programs/myp/myp.htm