Every year, I teach about the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, and my students automatically connect the subject to a booming American economy, flappers, and speakeasies. This tends to be their general understanding of the 1920s: that the entire American population enjoyed prosperity and the thrill of challenging social norms. To build my students\u2019 appreciation of the nuances of life in the 1920s, I used documents from the Digital Atlas and TAH to create a group, primary document-based activity that pushed students to think more critically about what actually happened.<\/p>\n
We kicked things off with a round of \u201cSocial Studies Scattergories.\u201d In groups of three to four, students brainstormed a list of every term, person, event, law\u2013basically anything they could connect to the 1920s. As we progressed through the lesson (featuring documents, images, and graphs), groups earned a point for every term that appeared and was correctly connected. If they had something that didn\u2019t show up but was still accurate, they gave themselves two points! By the end, the group with the most points earned ultimate bragging rights\u2026 and the honor of being the true \u201cbee\u2019s knees<\/a>\u201d of the 1920s\u2026flagpole sitting<\/a> included, of course!<\/p>\n I created five document sets that included images, graphs, and documents from the TAH collection of the 1920s, for students\u2019 analysis that would build a more complete picture of the 1920s. These sets focused on the automobile, women, farmers, urbanization, and electricity, as well as modernism versus traditionalism.<\/p>\n After a lively group discussion about the documents, students begin to ask more thoughtful questions about the realities of the 1920s. For their final task, students re-evaluate their initial assumptions and respond to the statement: \u201cThe Roaring Twenties was a time of change.\u201d They must take a position, either agreeing or disagreeing, and then support their response with evidence from the documents. Throughout the lesson, students engage with new information, connect it to prior historical knowledge, and draw parallels to their own experiences.<\/p>\n Using TAH documents allows students to develop their own interpretations grounded in primary sources rather than relying on secondary narratives. By the end of the activity, while everyone may still want to be the \u201cbee\u2019s knees,\u201d my goal is to ensure they leave as true \u201cwise heads,\u201d better equipped with a deeper and more critical understanding of the era.<\/p>\n Lauren Goepfert is a graduate of the Master of Arts in American History and Government program at Ashland University. Named the 2018 Madison Fellow for the state of Florida, she now teaches at Longwood High School on Long Island, NY.<\/em><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/item\/2016832965<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.tahdigitalatlas.org\/map\/economy-in-the-1920s<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.tahdigitalatlas.org\/economic-troubles-in-agriculture<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/document\/prohibition-success-or-failure<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Measuring-Bathing-Suits.jpg.webp)
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