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Reading passage Grade 4 Social Studies & Civics

The Dust Bowl: When Dry Years Changed the Southern Plains

A grade 4 passage on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, tracing how plowing, drought, and wind changed the southern plains and how farming changed afterward.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify the sequence of causes that turned dry years into dust storms.
  2. Students will explain how the plains and their farms changed after the Dust Bowl years.

Vocabulary

Drought
A long stretch of drier-than-normal weather that leaves too little water for people, farms, and nature. Droughts build slowly and can last for years.

Also: prairie, windbreak, soil

Teacher overview

This passage tells the story of the Dust Bowl for fourth graders: the prairie grass that held the soil, the plowing that removed it, the drought and wind that followed, and the new farming habits that helped the land recover. It supports units on American regions or on people and the land, and it pairs the history with a clear cause-and-effect chain students can retell.

The Dust Bowl: When Dry Years Changed the Southern Plains — Grade 4 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

In the 1930s, a long dry spell struck the southern Great Plains. This wide, flat land reaches across parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. To see why those years hurt so much, start with the grass.

For ages, thick prairie grass covered the plains. Its deep roots wove through the soil and held it like a net. Wind could howl across the flats for days, and the soil stayed put. Dry years came and went, and the grass kept its grip.

Then the price of wheat rose. Farmers wanted more fields, so they plowed up wide stretches of grassland. For a few rainy years, the wheat grew well and times were good. But when the rain stopped coming, the wheat died, and the plowed soil lay bare under the sun.

The wind found that loose, bare soil and lifted it into the sky. Dark walls of dust rolled over farms and towns. People called them black blizzards. Dust drifted like snow against fences and barns. It crept under doors, into beds, and into food. Breathing it made children and old people sick.

Many families gave up. They packed what fit in the car and drove away to look for work, often heading west. Some small towns lost so many people that shops and schools closed their doors.

Help came with new ideas about the land. Farm experts traveled the plains and taught new habits. Farmers planted long rows of trees, called windbreaks, to slow the wind before it reached the fields. They plowed along the curves of the land instead of in straight lines, so rain soaked in instead of racing off. They let worn-out fields rest under grass again.

In time the rains returned, and the land slowly healed. But the place had changed. Farms were fewer and bigger. Rows of trees planted in the 1930s still stand today, and many farmers still follow the habits their grandparents learned the hard way. The people who stayed passed down the lesson that the soil, the water, and the grass have to be cared for together.

Questions

  1. What covered the southern plains before the wheat fields, and what did it do for the soil?
  2. Why did farmers plow up so much of the grassland?
  3. What was a black blizzard?
  4. Why did many families leave the plains during those years?
  5. Name two new habits the farm experts taught farmers.
  6. Why would long rows of trees help protect a farm's soil? Use details from the passage.
  7. The passage says the place had changed even after the rains returned. Give two ways the plains were different after the Dust Bowl than before it.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Thick prairie grass covered the plains, and its deep roots held the soil like a net so the wind could not carry it away.
  2. Answer: The price of wheat rose, so farmers wanted more fields to grow more wheat and plowed up wide stretches of grassland.
  3. Answer: A dark wall of dust rolling over farms and towns. The passage says wind lifted the loose, bare soil into the sky and people called the storms black blizzards.
  4. Answer: The dust ruined crops and made people sick, so families packed their cars and drove away to look for work, often heading west.
  5. Answer: Any two of: planting rows of trees called windbreaks, plowing along the curves of the land so rain soaks in, or letting worn-out fields rest under grass.
  6. Answer: The trees slow the wind before it reaches the fields. Since it was wind that lifted the bare soil into black blizzards, slowing the wind helps the soil stay put.
  7. Answer: Any two of: farms were fewer and bigger, rows of 1930s trees still stand, farmers kept the new habits, some towns had lost people and shops, or people passed down the lesson of caring for soil, water, and grass together.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Read the passage aloud while students follow along, then build a five-link cause-and-effect chain on the board together, from plowed grass to black blizzards, before students answer. Questions 1 through 5 make a fair reduced set.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to write a diary entry from a plains farmer in two scenes, one during a dust storm and one five years after planting a windbreak, using at least three details from the passage.

ELL supports

Pre-teach prairie, drought, windbreak, and soil with a three-panel sketch: grass with deep roots, bare plowed dirt under wind, and a field behind a row of trees. Accept short-phrase answers for questions 1 through 5.

Extensions

Have students map the five states named in the passage on a blank United States outline and shade the region where they meet, then label it with one sentence explaining what happened there in the 1930s.