Showing the students advertisements from the time promoting these new canned/instant food is a good way to begin student engagement on this subject. One thing that would have to be talked about with the students is that prepared meals today are being made with items that have been prepackaged to make the cooking process faster and easier than it once was. The amount of time needed to cook a meal has been shortened because of this. There are people that make most of their meals from scratch and take some time cooking, but more than likely at some point in their process they are utilizing something that has sped up the cooking.
A great object that can be brought in to display to the students is a K-ration or another type of ration pack. Students would be able to examine what makes up these ration packs and see just how it works. If it is possible to have several that can be made the students could even sample the food that is contained in these packs. They could then discuss their opinions of sampling the different items and what advantages people would have by using these packs.

A way to draw the students interest on the topic of immigration is to have them take a virtual tour of Ellis island. They can explore all of the different stops an immigrant would have to go through in order to pass through the inspection station. The students can learn about the entire process and some of the reasons people would get detained at Ellis island or sent back to the country they came from. Once you have the students hooked on immigration you would want to explain to them why these people were coming to the United States. There are several reasons why the people were leaving their country and several reasons why America was the destination they chose. Another activity that could be used to draw the students in would be to have them write about what would cause them to leave their country for another. They could explain where they would go and why they decided to go there. A couple other things to consider would what kind of impact did immigration have on cities and the industries that were booming in the US at that time.

I would begin by having the students make a list of all of the devices they have in their kitchen (this can be expanded to the entire home, but I would focus just on the kitchen). I would then have the students share what they wrote while I compiled a list of these items on the board. After the list is created go through it and talk to the students about what the item did and what life was like before it was invented. The prime example is the dishwasher, yes there are still some people that do wash some items by hand. But most of the dishes people use end up in the dishwasher to be cleaned saving large amounts of time. Talk to the students about what it would be like if they didn't have a dishwasher and had to wash and dry all of the dishes by hand. What would there evening after dinner look like compared to what it is now. I would then talk to the students about how these labor saving devices greatly changed the lives of women. They now had vast amounts of time that was once spent completing various chores around the house. This led to a shift in women going back to the workforce and later down the road their struggle/fight for equality.
The second focus in this module was the cold war. The emphasis on the cold war is the struggle between the United States and Soviet Union with the arms race and space race along with some wars/crisis's where the two sides never actually fight one another. This module showed that the fight/competition between the two didn't stop there. They were also battling one another with other forms of technology as well. The Soviets felt that the Americans were wasting their time with some of these labor saving devices and therefore the Soviets were superior because they were focused on more useful technology.