Making Connections in History: Climate Change and the Dust Bowl
An Archive of Texas History Lesson Plan
The Archive of Texas History is an ideal resource for creating engaging, effective lesson plans
that support Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Using primary sources such as
historical newspapers and government documents, students learn to improve their critical
thinking skills, compare and contrast perspectives and form their own conclusions.
The following Archive of Texas History lesson plan is suggested for grades 9-12.
Introduction
TEKS requires high school students to use primary source material to explore and analyze
U.S. and Texas history, including “the impact of geographic factors on major events” in the
19th and early 20th centuries. TEKS also states that agricultural science should be
incorporated into the curriculum, and that students should understand the consequences of
human modification to the environment. The following lesson plan integrates all three of
these disciplines by challenging students to examine the long-term relationship between
agricultural practices, environmental change and historical events.
In this lesson, students will:
Closely read a variety of articles from historical Texas newspapers
Evaluate how poor farming practices led to soil depletion and erosion and
contributed to the Dust Bowl
Draw connections between the farming practices that led to the Dust Bowl and how
current human practices change the environment
Design a flow chart to demonstrate their understanding of a long-term trend
Use inference and research skills to present a creative, educated prediction
Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students should be able to:
Understand how primary source articles can be used to examine trends over time
Describe how human activities can lead to environmental change, especially in
relation to the Dust Bowl
Connect historical research to current events
Use a flow chart to depict a series of related events over time
Background Research
First, the class should be split into two groups. The first group should read the 1885 Dallas
Morning News article entitled “N.A.T. Looks over New Wheat Fields.” The second group
1
should read the 1848 Texian Advocate article “A Contrast.” Each group should prepare a brief
summary of their article to present to the rest of the class. For example:
→ “Wheat Fields” – This article claims that when people settle and farm the
once-dry lands of the West, they directly influence the climate there and thus
make it suitable for farming. The more people plant crops, the more it rains,
because plants act as water pumps that add moisture to the air.
→ “Contrast” – This article claims that rotating crops is essential to preserving
the fertility of the soil and ensuring the economic productivity of farming.
Planting a single type of crop over and over again will exhaust natural
resources and leave people impoverished in any region.
Students should compare and contrast the opposing points of view offered in each article.
Can they predict which writer will be proven correct? Which viewpoint is most scientifically
accurate? Which article seems to have had the most influence on 19th and early-20th century
farming and migration patterns?
Next, students should all read the 1930 Dallas Morning News article “Efficient Land Use
Remains Big Agricultural Problem,” and the 1935 article “Texan Will Bomb Clouds, Others
to Pray for Rain.”
Students should discuss how these 20th-century articles compare to those they read from the
19th-century. For example, the “Wheat Fields” article states reported plenty of rain for
farming and encouraged people to settle and farm once-dry land. The latter two articles
report that severe droughts and dust storms are damaging crops and livelihoods in those
same places. All the articles agree that human practices can affect the environment through
the soil, weather or other factors.
Activities
1. Students should conduct independent research on how unsustainable agricultural practices
helped cause the Dust Bowl. Why did farmers continued to use such practices despite
articles such as “Land Use” and “Contrast” urging them not to? Did the short-term
economic gains justify the long-term effects? Why or why not? What‟s a better solution for
surviving a drought: planting cover crops and rotating fields to keep soil fertile and moist, or
exploding TNT into the clouds in hopes of creating rain?
→ This article from the Dallas Morning News might be useful in helping
students determine that economic factors played a role in farmers‟ decisions
2. Using NewsBank products when available, students should find current news articles that
report on current human-induced environmental changes, especially those related to
agriculture or droughts. For example, large-scale farms producing monocultures have been
linked to decreases in honeybee populations; clearing trees for livestock is often reported to
affect the climate; and increasing population in the West is resulting in severe water
shortages in some areas.
2
3. What connections can students draw between the economy-driven agricultural practices
that contributed to the Dust bowl and the current environmental crises? Do they think
Americans have „learned a lesson‟ from history? Why or why not?
4. Students should be prompted to create a flow chart that demonstrates their understanding
of the long-term relationship between farming practices, environmental changes and
historical events, such as the example below:
Late 1800s – early 1900s: 1930s: Combined with natural
Single crop farming and a drought, these practices lead
lack of cover crops and crop to severe dust storms that
rotation over time lead to soil cause people to lose their
erosion and depletion of livelihoods and abandon their
nutrients/moisture from soil farms. The Dust Bowl begins.
Late 1900s: Modern
technology and a global
Early 2000s: Climate change economy encourages bigger,
and other environmental more industrialized farms;
concerns caused by human while increasing populations
behaviors are again making and new irrigation systems
news. draw more and more people
to the American West.
Mid- to late-2000s: ???
5. Encourage students to use their inferring and research skills to imagine what might come
next on the flow chart. Might history repeat itself? For extra credit, students can write a
short story about the future of water in the West (fiction or non-fiction) or create a piece of
art (collage, sketch, video, etc) depicting an imaginary scene from the future.
3