Book Summary
Dust Bowl Disaster describes the economic and personal hardships endured by farmers in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada during the 1930s. People living in this region went from prosperity to poverty as a relentless drought caused their farms to dry up and dust storms to rage. Period photographs and maps support the text.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Visualize

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of visualizing to understand text
• Understand and identify cause-and-effect relationships
• Identify and use prepositional phrases within sentences
• Identify similes

Materials

• Book -- Dust Bowl Disaster (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• United States map
• Visualize, cause and effect, prepositional phrases, similes worksheets

    Indicates an opportunity for student to mark in the book. (All activities may be completed with paper and pencil if books are reusable.)

Vocabulary

• Content words: conditions, conservation, disasters, drought, dust pneumonia, Dust Bowl, dust storm, economic, erosion, flouted, grasslands, Great Depression, Great Plains, hope, income, irrevocably, migration, precipitation, prosperity, recovery, unemployed