Dust Bowl Disasters

This nonfiction reading worksheet is designed for students in Grades 7, 8, and 9 to strengthen informational text comprehension, historical literacy, and analytical reasoning. Students read a passage about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and examine how environmental factors such as drought and poor farming practices led to widespread social and economic consequences, reinforcing understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in history.

Learning Goals

• Cause & Effect in Informational Texts (Grades 7-9)
  Students identify how specific environmental and human actions led to historical outcomes.
• Key Ideas & Supporting Details
  Learners analyze important facts about the Dust Bowl and its impact on families and farms.
• Historical & Environmental Understanding
  Students connect environmental conditions to economic hardship and migration during the Great Depression.
• Evidence-Based Reasoning
  Responses require using details from the text to support conclusions.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource
  Designed by educators to align with middle school ELA and social studies standards.
• Cross-Curricular Integration
  Connects reading skills with U.S. history and environmental studies.
• Structured Analytical Questions
  Guides students through identifying causes, effects, and broader implications.
• Flexible Classroom Use
  Ideal for history units, nonfiction reading practice, discussion prep, or assessment.

This printable worksheet gives students meaningful practice with analyzing cause-and-effect relationships in informational texts while deepening understanding of a major historical event. By examining the Dust Bowl’s causes and consequences, learners strengthen reading comprehension, critical thinking, and historical reasoning skills. Suitable for classroom instruction or homeschool use, this no-prep resource supports confident analysis of nonfiction texts and meaningful connections between environment, history, and human experience.

This worksheet is part of our Grade 7 Reading Comprehension collection.