California Gold Rush Unit Plan

Grade: 4 Class length: 50 minutes Types of students: ELL’s,

learning disabilities, special
circumstances

Learning Objectives:

Objective #1 Students will be able to recognize and understand the importance of major

characters and historical sites involved in the California Gold Rush.

History and Social Science Standard 4.3.1

Objective #2 Students will analyze the causes and effects of the gold rush, and compare the

different travel routes people took to mine for gold in California.

History and Social Science Standard 4.3.2

Objective #3 Students will understand the effects of the gold rush on daily life, settlements,

politics, and physical environment.

History and Social Science Standard 4.3.3

Objective #4 Students will be able to explain how California became a state so quickly and the

influence it had on the United States politically.

History and Social Science Standard 4.3.5

 Daily Description of Activities

Day One: Open up the lesson by asking students to guess why the San Francisco 49ers

(show a picture of the team) are named the 49ers. Ask them how they came up with their team

colors. The answer is because the athletes are historians! Transition to the California gold rush,

and how gold is the reason that California is the state that it is today. Introduce the beginnings of

the Gold Rush, explain how James Marshall found the first piece of gold at Sutter’s mill, and

how news spread until people were traveling from all over. Play the brief video that grabs the

students’ attention and covers the gold rush. Pass out the fill-in-the-blank gold rush worksheet

that has a word bank at the top, vocabulary words to memorize, and includes a short quiz at the

bottom. Complete the fill-in-the-blank together, and have students take the rest home as

homework. Summative assessment will be the homework worksheet.

Day Two: Begin by asking students to snowball off of each other in creating a brief

summary of what we discussed yesterday (this will be the formative assessment). Pass out

notebooks to each student and explain directions for starting our gold rush portfolios. Go around

the classroom and pick students to read sections of the gold rush summary aloud for the class.

Allow some time for everyone to cut out and glue flaps in their interactive notebooks. Have table

partners discuss the causes and effects of the goldrush (to be written under their flaps in the

notebooks), and then collectively draft an example answer on the board for students to copy

down if they get stuck. Continue with interactive notebooks until class time runs out.

Day Three: Refer to the vocab words from day one- play a jeopardy style game where two

people come up at a time and hit a buzzer after a vocab word is said. The first person to hit it

needs to spell the word/give a definition/use it in a sentence (teacher’s choice). This is a

check-for-understanding exercise to assess retention. The team with the most points gets a prize!
Creative writing task: each person writes in their journal about their journey as a

miner/blacksmith/hotel owner…etc. Where did they come from? How long have they been

away? Have they found any gold?

Day Four: Today we talk about how California became a state so quickly. The gold rush was

certainly an accelerator. The other cause was the Bear Flag Revolt. Introduce the Bear Flag

revolt and how it was happening at the same time as the gold rush; each were catalysts in

California becoming a state. Pass out the California mapping worksheet and have students fill

out Sonoma, Sutter’s Mill, Sacramento, and Monterey with the main events that happened there.

Day Five: Gold Rush Reenactment! Assign students different roles (miner, blacksmith, store

owner, hotel owner) and give each the same amount of money to start. Whoever has the most

money at the end wins! This is a creative form of summative assessment to see how well the

students grasp the idea of the California gold rush.

Instructional Materials:
Introduction to the Gold Rush video: https://youtu.be/iydRkC0gMZI
 UNIT LESSON PLAN

Lesson Topic: California Gold Rush effects on Daily Life

Standard: 4.3.3 Analyze the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily
life, politics, and the physical environment
Subject: Social Studies

Grade Level: 4th

Key Vocabulary Key Questions

1. mining 4. disappointment 1. Where did people travel from and which routes
did they take to come to California to mine for gold?
2. strenuous 5. traveled
2. What would it be like to leave your family in
3. unpredictable 6. riverbed hopes of getting wealthy?

3. What are some other jobs you could do if you

weren’t lucky enough to find gold?

Materials / Resources / Technology

-One buzzer for the jeopardy game
-list of vocabulary words
-gold rush video
-gold rush worksheet
-Interactive notebooks for creative writing exercise

Materials needed

Text: none

Pages:

-list of vocabulary words from earlier lesson

Other: -gold rush worksheet
LESSON OBJECTIVE
Students will understand the effects of the gold rush on daily life, settlements, politics, and physical

environment.

ACTIVITY PLAN
1. Opening Hook for Learning:
(How will I gain students’ ● Separate the class into two teams and explain the rules of the
attention?) jeopardy game. Give a brief review of the vocabulary words from
yesterday’s lesson and explain that they will be involved in the game.

● The first student to hit the buzzer will have to: a) use the vocabulary
word in a sentence, b) spell the word, or c) give the word’s definition.
Team with the most points wins a prize at the end.
(20 min)

2. Direct Instruction:
(How will I present new ● Play gold rush video on the tv
material and make learning
relevant?) ● Pass out fill-in-the-blank gold rush worksheet

● Start the worksheet as a class. Have students take turns reading

aloud sections of the page, and have the class raise hands to decide
the correct answer on the sheet.
(15 min)

3. Guided and Independent

Practice:
(How will I get students to ● Students will complete comprehension questions on the gold rush
practice what has just been video, as well as a brief quiz
taught?)

(10 min)
4. Closing:
(How can I bring closure to
summarize learning and
enhance retention of the
material?)
● Instruct students to get out their interactive notebooks and give
them a creative writing prompt where they need to imagine being a
blacksmith, miner, hotel owner…etc. Set a 5 minute timer and allow
them to answer these questions:

“Where did you travel from?”

“Did you leave behind your family?”
“How long have you been away?”
“Have you found any gold yet?”
(5 min)

Analysis

Content: The main ideas taught in this unit are as follows: the transformation and statehood

of California as an agricultural, industrial, and political power; the developments of towns and

settlements; the boom of immigration and diversity in California; the evolution of daily life; and

the significant characters and historical sites that took part in the Gold Rush. Each of these

concepts are important for the students to know because it paints a picture of the earlier days of

California and how drastically things can change in such a short amount of time. The first piece

that students will learn about the Gold Rush will be the who and where. When giving an

overview of the mining story, it is crucial that students walk away remembering the key

characters and historical sites involved. Students will hear the names of James Marshall and

Sutter’s Mill over and over again in different forms. First, audibly, by way of the teacher

explaining and retelling the past. Next, visually, from the brief video played that goes into a little

more detail and sums up the Gold Rush nicely. Lastly, through independent work, students will

receive a handout where they can fill-in-the-blank and complete a quick quiz to enhance reading

comprehension.
 After students learn the basics of the Gold Rush, they will dive a little deeper to analyze

the effects of the Gold Rush on everyday life, agriculture, politics, culture, and economics.

Through class discussions and working with table groups, students will discover the major

effects that were the numerous people that moved to California and built cities and expanded

business. Effects on the environment involved the decimation of Sutter’s mill because it was

overrun by miners. However, on the positive side, the city of Sacramento was founded and later

became the capital of California. Politically, California became a state, and more specifically, a

nonslavery state. Students will write down in their own words the causes and effects of the Gold

Rush in their interactive notebooks. Cutting out and pasting flaps will stimulate their creative

side and reinforce the information when they physically write it out. It is imperative that students

learn about the Gold Rush, because it was the catalyst for the growth of California.

Sequence: Before students learn about the Gold Rush, they will have learned about native

life in California and the Spanish missions. Students will learn about the great nations of the

California Indians, their economic activities, where they are located geographically, as well as

their legends and religious beliefs. Next, they would learn about the Spanish exploration and

colonization of California, and about the relationships between soldiers, Native Americans, and

missionaries like Father Junipero Serra, Juan Crespi, and Gaspar de Portola. The last thing

students would learn as a segway to the Gold Rush would be the Mexican War for Independence

and how it changed territorial boundaries of North America, followed by the period of Mexican

rule in California and the rise of rancho economy.

After the unit on the Gold Rush, students will follow the transformation of the California

economy, its political and cultural development from the 1850s to the end of the 1900s. Students

will understand the story and the lasting impacts of the building of the transcontinental railroad
and the contributions of the Chinese workers. Immigration to California will be studied in more

depth, including the conflicts between diverse groups like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Big

Historical events like the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and World War II will be looked at

along with their causes and consequences. The main idea will be on the many different growing

industries and agricultures of California.

Equity: This unit on the Gold Rush will be sure to include diverse students and English

Language Learners by using various teaching methods and tailoring the lessons for different

learning styles. When the class learns about the different people who immigrated to California

from a lot of far off places, that would be a good opportunity to recognize different cultures and

the paths taken by desperate families searching for gold. There are also places in the unit where

students are asked to imagine themselves as gold miners and to write about or talk about how

their experience might be. This is an open-ended discussion question and gives space for

students to share their unique input and how their background might influence the way they

picture their make-believe story. As for English Language Learners, assignments and class

activities are approached in many different ways so that for any students who have a hard time

reading and writing, there are other methods they can use to show they know the concepts.

Instead of tests or long writing assignments that can be difficult or stressful for students,

formative and summative assessments will be incorporated into class discussions, creative

writings, and the Gold Rush reenactment at the end to ensure the highest level of student success.