New Deal American Culture

Class begins by introducing students to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) using Source A. With this source, students brainstorm questions about New Deal art using the organizer before viewing the poster collection. Students then view one collection of New Deal posters and determine how they might shape American culture using the organizer. Teachers may choose to assign all of the collections or focus on a few. Students can view these in small groups, then compare as a whole class, or students can individually view one collection and compare in small groups.  After comparing with others, students rank the topics of the poster collections from most to least influential to American culture. Finally, students create an introduction for the collection of posters that they deem most influential. In their annotations, students must explain with evidence from the collection why their chosen collection was most influential to American culture.