Fifth Grade, Fourth Nine Weeks
Attachment (Weeks 29 – 33)
Your Name and Date
_______________________
_______________________
Living in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century
Technology has become a vital part of our daily lives. From toddlers to retired
citizens, Americans lives are surrounded by technological equipment from
televisions to quantum computers. Now, it’s your turn to use your technology
skills to present what you learn about the twentieth and twenty-first century.
Because our schools have different technology, your choices for creating the
movie might be:
I-Movie ©, Powerpoint©, Hyperstudio©, Clarisworks©
Slideshow, or Storybook Weaver©.
You have now been hired to direct a documentary movie about America in
the 1900’s and 2000’s. Success on your job requires you to:
1. Include certain bits of specific information as well as certain vocabulary
words (You don’t have to use all the words listed, just as many as you
can- the more you use correctly, the more professional your movie will
seem);
2. Find and include additional information you feel makes your movie more
interesting; and
3. Use your creativity and technological skills to make your movie “flow”
logically without losing the audience’s interest or ability to keep track of
what’s going on.
A. Your movie should include sections (chapters) covering the following periods:
[Because you are the director(s) of the movie, you are allowed to change the
names of the sections as long as the topics are the same.]

Becoming a World Power {from chapter 14}
Words to use:
armistice
assembly line
aviation
bureaucracy
civil rights
commission
conservation
consumer goods
depression
division of labor
imperialism
industrialization
isolation
merit system
military draft
progressive
ration
reform
settlement house
stock market
suffrage
unemployment
urbanization
1

Global Conflict {from chapter 15}
Words to use:
civilian
Cold War
communism
concentration camp
D Day
dictatorship

free world
front
Holocaust
interest
island-hopping
opportunity cost
parallel timeline
rationing
recycle
refugee
trade-off
Into Modern Times {from chapter 16}
Words to use:
airlift
arms control
arms race
cease- fire
deficit
detente
editorial cartoon
hijack
integration
migrant worker
nonviolence
population density
satellite
scandal
superpower
terrorism
Watergate
The documentary movie you create will be watched by some people who know
about these topics and some who don’t. It’s your responsibility to be accurate
and complete in your reporting the facts about such an interesting time.
B. The following events, people, places, and ideas are important to our history
and have, in some way, impacted our lives today. Your movie should include at
least ___ of the events, ___ of the people, ___ of the places, and ___ of the
ideas in order to paint a complete picture. (This is just a few of the important
people, places, etc. that have had major impacts upon the United States and the
world we live in!)
Events
World War I
World War II
Cold War
Sinking of Lusitania
People
Henry Ford
Carrie Chapman Catt
Theodore Roosevelt
George W. Carver
Places
Panama Canal
Alaska
Pearl Harbor
relocation camps
D day
Great Migration
Great Depression
Rosa Parks
Woodrow Wilson
Dwight Eisenhower
Holocaust
Franklin D.
Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
Carl Sagan
Neil Armstrong
John J. Audobon
John F. Kennedy
Ronald Reagan
Harry Truman
Germany
Soviet Union
Palace of
Versailles
English Channel
Roaring Twenties
Victory in Europe
Germans surrender
Korean War
Watergate scandal
Cuban Missile Crisis
9-11 Twin Towers
Normandy
Vietnam
Washington, D.C.
East Germany
Berlin
NASA
Japan
Ideas
Dust Bowl
New Deal Program
Civil Rights
Harlem
Renaissance
NAACP
League of Nations
boycott
Navajo Code
Talkers
communism
terrorism
democracy
capitalism
race into space
Memorial Day
Veterans’ Day
2
Living in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Teacher Notes
This project follows directly along with Unit 7 in Harcourt Horizons: United States
History. The three required sections for the student movies are simply the 3
chapters in Unit 7. Vocabulary words listed are also taken from the textbook
vocabulary lists.
The depth of knowledge required by you depends upon your students. The
degree of technological skills you expect to see applied will depend both upon
your students’ expertise with computers and what technology you have available.
Just remember that the more we expect, the more we get out of our students.
Academic rigor comes from challenging assignments organized to push our
students to meet their highest potential.
When assigning this project, you will need to determine how many of the listed
events, people, places, and ideas your students will need to include. This is a
good place to differentiate. The numbers might vary according to student need as
well as giving students some flexibility in what grade they want to work for. (i.e.
100pts. = 5 of each; 90pts. = 4 of each; etc.)
© Liz Canales 2003
3