Australian History -Great Depression Rise of Radical Political Groups Usefulness

Help your high school history students build key historical thinking skills with this no-prep pdf and digital worksheet and slide deck activity focused on the rise of radical political groups during Australia’s Great Depression. This resource uses primary and secondary sources to explore the social and political impacts of economic hardship in the 1930s.

Designed for digital or print delivery, this resource includes a guided slide deck, editable student tasks, and source usefulness scaffolding, making it perfect for classroom lessons, assessments, or homework.

Product Purpose and Benefits

This resource helps students:

• Analyse the causes and consequences of the Great Depression in Australia
• Understand how social and political instability led to the growth of radical ideologies
• Strengthen their source evaluation skills using structured prompts and models
• Engage with historical content through inquiry-based learning
  

What’s Included in This Resource:

1. Editable Slide Deck – “Understanding Source Usefulness”

The lesson begins with a teacher-guided slide deck that introduces key concepts of source usefulness, including content and provenance, bias, perspective, and purpose, with sample questions, sentence starters, and modelled examples to support discussion and explicit teaching of historical thinking skills.

2. Source Evaluation Worksheet

After the slide deck, students apply their learning to a structured, scaffolded worksheet focused on two real sources.

Students are guided to:

• Evaluate each source’s content (what is being said/shown)
• Analyse the provenance (who, when, where, why)
• Make informed judgments about usefulness for understanding the event
• Use evidence to support their evaluation in a clear, written format

3. Source Usefulness Activity

Worksheet designed to deepen understanding.

This task encourages students to:

• Examine the surface and subtext of both sources
• Explore tone, language, and visual cues

• • Build confidence in engaging with unfamiliar source types