Name: _________________________
Test Date: _______________
Ch. 9 Our American Culture
Need to Know Study Guide
* Immigrants moved to the United States for new opportunities.
* Prejudice affected the lives of some immigrants by making it difficult to
find good jobs.
*Most immigrants from Europe first went to Ellis Island upon arriving in the
United States.
*The Great Migration was where African Americans moved from rural areas
(farming areas) in the south to big cities in the north in search of better
jobs and a better life.
* People modify, or change, their environment to meet their needs.
* To meet transportation needs, people build roads, highways, bridges, and
railroads.
* A tunnel is a path under something. It speeds up transportation.
* A canal is a waterway dug across land. It speeds up transportation too.
* The Panama Canal is a waterway that was built to connect the Atlantic
Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It made it much faster and easier for ships
to travel from one ocean to the other.
*Dams make electricity from water power.
*HYDRO means WATER – hydro is the word the ancient Greeks used for
“water.”
*A reservoir collects and stores water for an area.
*Farms use irrigation systems to bring water to fields during dry spells.
*Irrigation is the moving of water to dry land for farming.
* Terracing is a way to farm on hillsides. The ancient Inca people used this
method of farming.
*Terraces look like giant stairs on the side of a mountain or hill.
*Pollution is anything that makes a natural resource dirty or unsafe to use.
*Conservation means saving resources to make them last longer.
* Landfills are places where trash is dumped.