How Well Do You Know Your Decade?

Seeing as today is Decade Day here at CHMS, this is your assignment: research your decade!

Your job is to find popular movies, songs, books, games, and fads from your decade.  Were there any notable sports events?  Who were some important figures from your decade?  Which cars were most popular?  TV shows?  What else happened?

Here are some general guidelines.  To search for books, look at the histories of the Caldecott Medal (1938-present) and the Newbery Medal (1922-present), as well as the DCF Award winners (1957-present).  To search for popular movies, you may want to search for the history of the Academy Awards (1927-present).  Popular songs by decade will be a little tougher, but I'm confident you'll find lots of material.  For sports, you may want to pick one sport, or you may want to look at Olympic history from your decade, which will give a different picture.  Games and fads are other examples of popular culture; a search "fads of the fifties" will bring up sites dedicated to that era, and a search of "popular culture of the fifties" will bring up similar sites.

If you haven't dressed up from a particular decade today, you'll be writing a 5-paragraph essay on why you chose not to dress up.  Or, you can choose to research the decade from which I drew my fashion today -- the 1970s.

How do you show me what you've found?

In MS Word, create a file that has your descriptions of different artifacts from your decade, as well as pictures and links to where you found your information.  Here's an example of what your finished product might look like.