My Video Outline for Student-Audience

My Video will be a Review of 8th Grade Social Studies

After watching a really boring movie from 1865-1917 US History with my students, I was tempted to change the idea that not all educational movies have to be boring. I try every day to make my classes as interesting as possible, but since it is history, it is important to try and engage my students any way possible.

My Outline

I will open up with images of Native Americans hunting buffalo, Eskimos making igloos, and Hawaiian Natives just enjoying their land.

I will then write the word in large letters IMPERIALISM

In the next segment, I will show images of the US railroad employees killing the buffalo for fun showing how the USA's main goal was to eliminate the Indians from the West since there was money to be made.

I will then describe how the Dawes Act was a Congressional Act that forced Native Americans off their own land to live on Reservations and describe how the idea was that they can have their own land in a reserved area specifically for them.

I will show that since the United States has been an imperialistic nation, how they changed the lives of the Native Americans for ever.

I will then move to how we took the land of Alaska along with the help of Sen. William Seward from the Russians for an unfair profit by Americans. This would lead us to another war--- the Cold War in the late 1950s-1980s. I will show how we also wiped the Eskimos off their own land simply because we wanted the oil and the resources from the area.

I will finally explain how the United States took the land from the Kingdom of Hawaii. Using Dole and the Sugar companies, we systematically wiped out the natives from Hawaii and when the King died and the Queen took over, we easily took control and annexed (took over) Hawaii.

This video will be only part of the video. However, this would show how the United States eventually got involved in World War I. I think this would be interesting for students to see what really happened in this type of format.


Let me know what you think. I will definitely be adding to the ideas as they are offered to me!