LESSON TITLE: The Social World of the California Gold Rush

Name(s): Grade: Date:

Nate Finalet 8th Grade April 13th

Esteban Hernandez Subject Area: Time Duration:

Teach Expansion and

Reform (1801-1861)

I. Overview (Less than 1 minute): Purpose is to guide instruction toward a coherent objective.
Should be a significant and measurable statement of what students will know and be able to do
as a result of the lesson.

Today’s lecture and class time will be focussed on the social environment of the California Gold
Rush and the interactions and mindsets of different peoples at the time. By the end of this class,
you will be familiar with the social climate between races, as well as be introduced to several
skills from the Common Core Standards that will help to improve historical thinking and stress
the importance of using primary source documents to come to conclusions.

1. What are the CA Content Standard(s) AND Common Core Standards addressed?

● 2 - Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source

● 5 - Describe how a text presents information.
● 6 - Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose.

2. What is/are the Essential Question(s) for the day?

● What did the social environment look like during the California Gold Rush?

3. What materials (e.g... handouts, readings, primary sources, graphic organizer, video,
PowerPoint, etc...) will be used? (Need to bring all materials on day of lesson)

● Google Slides/Nearpod Presentation

● Primary sources (“handed out to students” for Guided Practice Activity)
II. Anticipatory Set/aka Opener (About 4 minutes): Purpose is to access prior knowledge,
connect prior knowledge to new knowledge, cue attention toward day’s topic, and/or create
interest. The opener introduces the lesson but should not overwhelm it. A good set seamlessly
flows into instruction.

Summary of Opener:

At the very start of class, students will be presented with a “Walk-In Activity.” Primary source
photographs from the time of the Gold Rush and students will be tasked to analyze the
photographs and provide brief thoughts and assumptions on what life might have been like
during the Gold Rush. This will then transition straight into the lecture, where students will be
able to see if their assumptions or thoughts were correct.

III. Direct Instruction (About 15 minutes): This is an instructional approach to learning driven
by the teacher. The purpose is to get information, usually new material, to students relatively
quickly. While this can take various forms, lecture is the most widely recognized. You will deliver
a PowerPoint lecture in this portion of your lesson.

Summary of Lecture:

● Initial discovery of gold

○ Primary locations for mining
○ Population details before influx
● Change in population
○ Effects: Housing, sanitation, law enforcement, violence
■ Destruction of Native land
● Most prominent populations that migrated to California
○ How did they work? (self-employed or joint-stock company)
○ Introduce the fact of prejudice and obvious discrimination
● Checkpoint Question:” What effects did the drastic population increase have on
California? List three.”
● Women in the Gold Rush
○ How were they viewed?
○ Differences between white women and women of different races/ethnicities
● Checkpoint Question: “How did minority women and white women differ?”
● Guided Practice Activity
● During “Closure”
○ One slide describing the lifestyle of Mexican/Hispanics
○ One slide describing the lifestyle of the Chinese
■ Meant to reinforce and add to the knowledge students gained from the
Guided Practice

1. How are you checking for understanding during lecture? Here you want to ensure that
students comprehend the information and are ready to use it.

Summary of strategy/technique:
 ● Ask questions periodically throughout the lecture
○ Checkpoint questions to assess understanding of content every few slides

IV. Guided Practice (The Bulk of Time in a Real Class – However, you will explain in
about 5 to 10 minutes): Purpose is to provide students the space to develop a deeper
understanding of the content and to hone critical thinking skills. The teacher provides the
instructions and the resources for an activity and then allows students to work through (often
collaboratively) the content and concepts to make their own. Teacher serves as a facilitator,
providing support when necessary. This should be a student-centered approach to learning. For
your lesson, the activity should be rooted in primary source analysis. (When you deliver your
lesson, you should display the instructions, primary source documents and give specific
examples of what students will be doing).

Summary of Guided Practice:

INSTRUCTIONS:

● Students split off into three different categories, with each category representing one of
three groups that were prominent in California during the Gold Rush: Whites,
Mexicans/Hispanics, and Chinese.
○ Once students have been numbered off (1-3), the entire class will form into
groups of three, with each race represented in the group.
● Students are to create their own scripts, in which each of the three races will be
described and represented based on evidence from primary sources. Each person in the
group can do so through a continuous discussion or monologue. Each person in the
group should have enough content to speak for 2 minutes, with the entire script lasting
about 8 minutes.
● Your scripts should express how each race fit within the social world of the California
Gold Rush. If you were this race during this time, how would you feel about your position
in society or about the other races within your group? How would you agree or disagree
with each other?
● Primary sources: Personal accounts, newspapers, and pictures from each of the three
races/cultures during the Gold Rush.

DISPLAY PRIMARY SOURCES

V. Closure (About 3 minutes): Purpose is to highlight new learning for students. Students
should take an active role in this summary. It reinforces the big takeaways for the day and
answers questions like, “So what? Why did we do this? What is this good for?” This is also a
good time to circle back to the essential question(s) for the day.

Summary of strategy/technique for Closure:

 ● The main goal of this activity is for students to understand cultural and racial beliefs of
these different groups
○ Additionally, students will be able to utilize historical and contextual thinking skills
using primary source material.
● Based on their use of the primary sources, students will be able to…
○ Determine the central ideas of primary sources (Common Core Standard #2)
○ Compare ideas based on how their primary source presents information and
viewpoints (Common Core Standard #5)
○ Provide a dialogue between three races based on an author’s point of view
presented from primary sources (Common Core Standard #6)

VI. Independent Practice (About 2 minutes): Purpose is to reinforce content knowledge and
continue to hone skills focused on in the day's lesson. This is done independently. Teacher will
check at the completion of the assignment to assess students’ skill level and understanding.
Sometimes occurs during class if time permits. For your lesson, this will be a homework
assignment.

Summary of Independent Practice:

Homework Assignment:

● Search online for two events that involved the two minority groups discussed in class
(Mexicans/Hispanic and Chinese).
○ Ex: newspaper reports, courthouse records, personal journals, etc.
● Write one paragraph on the details of both events and discuss whether the two groups
had faced similar or different experiences/troubles in society.
● Lastly, based on your research and what we discussed in class, write another paragraph
as one of the minority groups. Describe whether you would put yourself and your family
in the same situation, trying to strike fortune in the mines. Explain why or why not. Use
primary sources, the textbook, and your notes to help bring you to a conclusion.

VII. Summative Assessment (Less than 30 seconds): Purpose is to evaluate student

performance of the objectives. Usually performed by students individually with teacher
monitoring integrity.

1. How will the content and the skills be tested at the end of the unit? For this lesson, no
need to create an actual assessment, just explain.

● Tomorrow at the beginning of class, we will be having a short 5 question quiz on all
material covered in class today.
● On Friday of next week, we will be having a Unit Exam. This test will consist of multiple-
choice questions on all material covered in this Unit, as well as short answer responses
on primary sources that we have reviewed in class. Some of the primary sources from
this lecture will also be included.
VIII. Identify 5 Sources Used to Design Lesson: This can be sources that assisted you in
content mastery and/or lesson plan development. (Use Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style)

● Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush. New
York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
● Yung, Judy. Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present. University
of California Press, 2006.
● Berton, Pierre. Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899. Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 1972.
● Kanazawa, Mark. “Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation in
Gold Rush California.” The Journal of Economic History 65, no. 3 (September 2005):
779-805.
● Khan Academy. “The Gold Rush in California: The American West.”
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/american-
west/a/the-gold-rush
● UCR: Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. “Daily Alta California, Volume 1,
Number 10, 31 December 1849.” https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?
a=d&d=DAC18491231.2.8&srpos=1&e=------184-en--20-DAC-1--txt-txIN-
disturbance+in+the+mines%21-------1