Gold Rush Lessons

The following interactive classroom activities will facilitate the study of the California Gold Rush era.

 Gold Rush Era Planning Cluster

Immersion Activities

Whole Class Activities

Read Aloud - By The Great Horn Spoon!

Word Wall

Maps

Songs

Journal Entries

Video

Suggested Activity Books:

Westward Ho! and Cooking Up US History

Group Center Activities

Computers Gold Rush Web Site Hunt Cooking Recipes-read Cookbooks-list Favorites Sourdough Flapjacks, and Herbal Teas Games Mexican Monte Fan Tan Cat's Cradle Science Stream in a bottle Cookie Erosion Properties of gold-weight, force, color Gold brick   Text Set Coming to America Cornerstones of Freedom: Gold Rush Gold Fever! Life in the Old West: Who Settled the West? Rough and Ready Prospectors: True Tales of the Wild West Striking it Rich The Great American Gold Rush

Gold Rush Web Sites

1. California Historical Society
www.calhist.org

2. Oakland Museum - Gold Fever
www.museumca.org/gold

3. San Francisco Museum
www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/masonrpt.html

4. San Jose Mercury News - Sesquicentennial
www.sjmercury.com/goldrush/index.shtml

5. Sacramento Bee - Sesquicentennial
www.calgoldrush.com/

6. PBS Gold Rush
www.pbs.org/goldrush

7. American Memory (Library of Congress) - Early California memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbintro.html

8. Sacramento Bee - Special Project - CA Native Americans www.sacbee.com/news/projects/native/

9. The Gold Rush History Alliance
www.timeship.com

10. Calicanto Associates - Songs from CA History
www.linkdot.com

11. Women in the Gold Rush
www.goldrush.com/~joann/

Gold Rush Group Research Activity

Overview
The Gold Rush changed California by bringing sudden wealth to the state,affecting its population, culture, and politics. The Gold Rush transformed San Francisco from a small village in 1847 to a bustling city in 1849. At the same time, the Gold Rush robbed many of California's earlier settlers of their land grants and property rights and caused irreparable environmental destruction through the system of hydraulic mining that was introduced in the 1850's.

Activity
Your group has been assigned to study one major topic of the Gold Rush. On the left side of the folder you will find data describing the topic you have been assigned. In an envelope you will find at least six questions concerning this topic. Your assignment is to select three of these questions and formulate an answer to these questions. These will later be used in a "Jeopardy" style game.

Presentation
Your team will present your topic and the three questions you have answered in the form of a report, a poem, a song, a skit or a picture. Make sure your presentation is memorable so the class will recall the questions and answers when it is time to play the "Jeopardy" game. All members of your team should be a part of the presentation.

Gold Rush Research Activity Lesson Plans

Expected Outcomes:
Students will be introduced to major topics of the California Gold Rush
Students will use multiple intelligences to present their information
Students will work cooperatively as a team in groups of three or four

Introductory Set:
Conduct a class discussion with the students about what they currently know about the California Gold Rush and give each group their topic folder.

Guided Practice:
Demonstrate how to answer, present, and record information about one of the Gold Rush topic questions.

Check For Understanding:

After the groups have reviewed their folders, ask the students to explain their task:
Ask: How many questions will you answer?
In what formats can your answers be presented?

Group Activity:
Students answer three questions, and prepare their presentation.

Closure:
Each group presents their topic questions and answers to the class. Students record key points from each topic in a matrix for future reference.

Extended Activity:
Students watch a portion of a televised Jeopardy game. Students write "Jeopardy" style statements about the topic questions they researched on index cards. The cards are placed in columns on a sentence strip holder. Points are awarded to groups that form a question about the statement on each card. Students use their matrix information sheets as needed.

Jeopardy Research Questions

Category: Famous People

1. California's Gold Rush attracted people who became larger than life through the stories and legends that surrounded them. Name at least three people.
2. Describe the two personalities of Black Bart.
3. What is Mark Twain's real name?
4. After gold was discovered, this person became a strong proponent for statehood, hoping to prevent squatters from taking New Helvetia.
5. Name the woman dancer who was involved in California's Gold Rush and include the name of her most famous dance.
6. Bret Harte came to California from New York and soon headed for the Mother Lode to work as a miner. Later in life he became a ________?

Category: Gold Rush Towns
1. Which town was also known as Hangtown, and why?
2. How did Grass Valley become the richest gold mining town in California?
3. Why was Coloma such an important town during the Gold Rush?
4. What Gold Rush town still supports mining today?
5. What was Sonora's claim to fame during the Gold Rush?
6. What made Frenchmen and several Indians decide to stay in Auburn?

Category: Ethnic Groups
1. What mining methods did the Chinese and Mexicans use?
2. What were the Spanish United States citizens of California called?
3. Why did Chinese miners form their own mining camps?
4. What items did Chinese merchants import to San Francisco?
5. How did the Foreign Miner's Tax affect the Gold Rush immigrants?
6. How were the California Indians mistreated during the Gold Rush?
7. What did some black men hope to buy with the gold they mined?

Category: Songs
1. What names did the Chinese tales use for California?
2. What did the popular expression, "Seeing the Elephant" mean?
3. In "The Days of '49" how did Tom Moore go from town to town?
4. Why did people ask, "What Was Your Name In The States?"
5. In the song, "The Lousy Miner," what did the miner find instead of gold?
6. In the song, "Oh California," what did a miner have on his knee?

Category: Economy
1. What businesses were established when a mining town sprung up?
2. What did a cartoon of the time featuring a French chef say about dinner prices?
3. What caused many miners to get scurvy in the mining camps?
4. What happened to the price of a horse in the mining towns?
5. What happened to food prices at the mining camps?
6. How did Sam Brannan become a millionaire during the Gold Rush?

Category: Mining Methods
1. Explain hydraulicking.
2. Explain the mining method in which miners used a blanket.
3. Explain the mining method that looked like a ferris wheel and used the water's currents to wash soil?
4. How did miners use a long tom to sift gold from dirt?
5. How did two miners employ a cradle or rocker to obtain gold?
6. How was a simple pan used to obtain gold from streams and rivers?

Category: The Journey
1. Why were some 49'ers stranded once they reached the Pacific Ocean?
2. What were the drawbacks to the Oregon-California Trail?
3. What were the drawbacks to the sea route around the tip of South America?
4. What was the most traveled route to California? (Be Specific!)
5. Why was Panama the most deadly route to California?
6. How many months and miles did each route take to travel to California? (Sea Route, Route Via Panama, and the Oregon-California Trail)

Gold Fever

Expected Outcomes:

Students will tie literature, social studies, economics and music together.
Students will become familiar with the term "gold fever."
Students will learn the process of panning for gold.
Students will experience bartering for goods in a gold rush economy.

Resources and Materials:

Fleischman, Sid. By The Great Horn Spoon! Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1963. CD and Songbook: They Came Singing: Songs of the First Californians. Calicanto and Associates, Oakland, CA, 1996.
Gold panning supplies
CD player, overhead of lyrics to "Oh California!"
Goods for sale cards
Time line event poster materials

Opening (small group class activity) :

Groups of four students are given information and a date with which they create a gold rush time line event poster. Groups place them in chronological order and attach them to a wire that is strung across the classroom. A group presenter shares the highlights of each gold rush time line poster.

Introductory Set:

Play CD of Oh California! - the most popular gold rush song. Play the song a second time and put the words up on the overhead projector. Invite the students to sing along with the music. Discuss the following two questions: Why did people come to California during the gold rush? and What do you think "gold fever" means?

Guided Practice:

Demonstrate how to pan for gold using sand, pie tins, water and copper BBs.

Check for Understanding:

Students pan for gold in groups of four.

Independent Practice:

Share some examples of prices for supplies and food that miners had to pay during the Gold Rush. Students will simulate a Gold Rush economy and shop with the copper BBs that each student panned. Within each group of four students one will be the seller and the other three will be buyers. Each seller is given some goods for sale price cards. Each seller will be selling only one commodity. The buyers may shop and barter for whatever goods they want or need until the timer rings.

Closure:

Have students return to their seats and write responses to the following questions: From the perspective of a seller or a buyer

what did you like or dislike about the experience? and At anytime today did you catch "gold

fever" why or why not? Lead a whole class discussion about the student written responses.

Extension:

Class reads ByThe Great Horn Spoon!

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD!

Motivation:

To become familiar with the fourth grade curriculum topic of California gold rush history and to explore it from a scientific perspective.

Objectives:

*For students to connect a social studies topic with a science topic.
*To do an internet search about gold.
*For students to observe the process of weathering on rocks with water and a chocolate chip cookie.
*For students to become familiar with the term placer (surface) deposits and the rock cycle.
*For students to be introduced to the periodic table of elements and some of the metallic metals.
*For students to chart the luster, color, malleability,and specific gravity of gold and copper from a field guide.
*For students to record the above properties with the compounds that are termed "fool's gold" and produce a Venn diagram that compares gold and pyrite (force test).

*For students to participate in the process of panning for gold with copper BBs, sand and water.

Background:

Recently, I read the historical novel, By the Great Horn Spoon , by Sid Fleishman. I will be using this book with my fourth grade class and doing many language arts activities related to this piece of literature. It occurred to me that my students would benefit from a geological focus on gold. This fits the science content standards for fourth grade earth science (mineral properties and erosion processes).

Activity #1: The Weathering of a Chocolate Chip Cookie
(Placer Deposition of Gold)

Purpose: To participate in a simulation of the weathering of rock by stream water action.

Motivation: To better understand that weathering is part of the rock cycle show overhead diagrams of the rock cycle, rock and mineral deposits and the stream flow patterns. Ask students which forces in nature expose, transport and deposit gold into stream beds?

Materials: One pkg. of chocolate chip cookies, clear plastic cups, clear plastic trays, wooden chopsticks, water

Activity: Have students (pairs) put a cookie in the tray. One student pours the water (stream) while the other stirs the water a few times. Students observe and record the condition of the water and the cookie. Students drain water back into cup one more time and repeat the pour and stir routine. Students observe and record what they see in the tray.

Assessment: Students record why the chocolate chips (gold nuggets) are on the bottom of the tray and the cookie particles are floating in the water. Discuss.

Extension Activity: Stream in a Bottle-compare both activities

ACTIVITY #1 Worksheet: The Weathering of a Chocolate Chip Cookie

Team members

Sketch of the rock cycle

Forces of nature that weather gold deposits

First observation of the cookie and water

Second observation of the cookie and water

Hypothesis

Stream In A Bottle Comparison

Activity #2: Metallic Properties (Don't be fooled!)

Purpose: To become familiar with the properties of luster, color, malleability and specific gravity.

Motivation: Show samples of real gold, copper and fool's gold. Ask, What is the same and what is different about these? Look at the periodic chart of elements and highlight the metallic symbols for gold and copper.

Materials: Pass out the field guide and the metallic properties worksheet . Clay, graham cracker, mallet.

Activity: Teacher demonstrates how to record the information about gold on overhead. Teacher demonstrates what malleability is by pounding some oil based clay in one tray and a graham cracker in the other tray. In groups of four have one student record the data on worksheet #2 that the other three report from their individual guides about either copper, chalcopyrite or pyrite.

Create a Hypothesis: What is similar about gold and copper? What is similar about chalcopyrite and pyrite?

Assessment: In pairs students complete a Venn diagram of gold and pyrite or copper and chalcopyrite.

Extension Activity: Make A Balance Activity (weight) Do an internet search about gold: www.museumca.org/fever/

Activity Worksheet #2: Properties of Metallic Minerals and Compounds Worksheet

Team Members:

Build a Matrix out of the information below:

Name of Minerals:

Luster

Color

Malleability

Specific Gravity

Conclusions:

Activity #3: Panning for "Gold"(BBs in the Sand)

Purpose: To observe that heavy metal sinks in sand. To become familiar with the process of panning for gold.

Motivation: What do you think are the steps in the process of panning for gold? Read some directions and have students write the steps on the overhead.

Materials: Pie tins, copper BBs, sand, tub of water, gold pouches (mini fishing sandbags with drawstrings)

Activity: Students pan for BBs in the tub of water and put their gold in their pouches

Create a Hypothesis: Why does the sand wash out but not the copper?

Further Questions: What were some other pieces of mining equipment besides a pan? How were they used? Is water always necessary to pan for gold?

Extension Activity: Pass out almond chocolate kiss candy and have the students mine for gold with their tongues inside their mouths! What were the weathering processes? Have the students go shopping with their gold nuggets at in a mining town. What did they buy and why? Write a paragraph to explain the purchases.