Disclaimer: this lesson is available for purchase over on TPT but this blog post goes into enough detail that you could build this lesson on your own if you wanted to put the work in to make it.
I’ve been out of the classroom and into the playroom for 10 months now (my baby was born early so she also marked my first day not to return to the classroom last May) Today also marks being on TPT for a month. Huzzah! To celebrate, I wanted to take a lesson that I love and go into some detail here. Maybe you read this and are inspired to mimic this approach with the same or different topic in your own class. If that seems like too much work, feel free to let me do all the work: follow the link on the image below.
The bare bones of this lesson art to have students first learn about the California Gold Rush from one unique perspective, to then combine their knowledge with a student who had a different perspective, and finally to see all four perspectives together and to reflect on what perspectives are missing. It really drives home the importance of corroboration in historical research.
One Perspective
The California Gold Ruse is the perfect lesson to do this for because it brought in so many people from different regions in the world. I start class with a quote from Joshua Paddison and the University of California from this essay:
In mining camps and in the crowded streets of San Francisco, previously isolated groups came into contact for the first time. Race, language, religion, and class separated Californians but proximity forced groups to accommodate as well as compete. Multiracial even before it was a state, California would be continuously shaped by its diversity.
Joshua Paddison
Then I ask the kids, do you think history would be different if we only focused on one perspective? Let’s flesh out that theory and experiment a bit today- I divide students into 4 groups and give them a packet of information that will introduce them to the California Gold Rush from one people group only. These packets have secondary and primary documents, including some visuals (ads, maps, or pictures). The four groups are:
American Politicians: I found an article online about how President Polk’s acknowledgment of the discovery of gold led many to rush to California and how the boom in population and the application for statehood further spurred the national debate about slavery and it’s spread. My favorite document that I was so lucky to find was a letter from one statesman to Polk stressing the need to make California a state soon and to settle Congress before the men of California make their own country and later empire that could one day rival the Union. It’s a hypothetical situation that seems ridiculous to us today but when my students read about it in the letter, I love to challenge them that this truly was a view held by American politicians and with the amount of foreigners, people of initiative, entrepreneurs, and desperate failed miners, why wouldn’t it be possible for them to take matters into their own hands?!?
Forty-Niners: This packet focused on the white miners who came to strike it rich and usually fell short. A secondary source introduces them while the letter from one brother to another helps to paint the dire picture of daily life. There are also plenty of drawings and pictures in the Library of Congress that help to show the tools that were used and the physical labor that went into mining. With this packet, my middle school boys (and some girls) tend to really focus on the fleas and disease that run rampant in the camp. One print shows the tools of a miner, which is detailed enough to include the bugs a miner wouldn’t be caught without!
Natives: This packet is obviously more somber than the others because it deals with the horrifying and unjust treatment of Natives. A portion of Paddison’s essay is used as the introductory secondary source as it provides population data as well as a general overview of the conflict that occurred between miners and natives. There were not many visual sources to find for this packet so I found maps of the tribes in California at the time of European contact and a map of the mining locations to see how they lined up. For the primary source, I included the laws that allowed for indenturing young natives. When I would talk to students from this group, I would sometimes ask them if they thought this perspective was a popular one to include in a textbook and I would get mixed responses. We would often get into the discussion of trends in history that this perspective would have been overlooked in a 1920s history book but historians and teachers are more likely to look at a social history in the 2020s so maybe it isn’t as surprising to include in a lesson about the California Gold Rush.
Chinese Immigrants: This packet starts off with a secondary source that helps explain why many Chinese men were immigrating away from China at the time and how their desire to one day bring their families to America led to very disciplined and hard working miners. The secondary source for this packet is likely the longest of all four because it also details the introduction of the Foreign Miner’s Tax and then the eventual Chinese Exclusion Act. Because the secondary source is long, I only put in one written primary document of a Chinese merchant writing to Congress and an advertisement for the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The instructions I give my students is that they have 10 minutes and a slip of paper to write notes on. I give them a heads up that their notes will be taped onto a poster soon and so they want to write neatly and to include a good amount of information as it will be an individual grade for them. In my class, we will have been working on writing notes so many students feel confident with this assignment.
Two Perspectives
After the 10 minutes, I tell them to get into partners. In some of my classes, I give them the freedom of choice because they already have shown me that they can be responsible. In other classes that have already proven less responsible or where there seems to be instances of friendship drama, I will assign them a partner to work with by marking their notes with a number that corresponds with another students in class.
When it comes time to share perspectives, I want students to actually listen to the other before jumping in and trying to move on through the assignment steps. All too often I find my students speeding through the sharing stage of a lesson like this and never really learning about what their partner has learned. Will what I’m about to do help? You know, I’m not sure but it’s an attempt!
I have the students agree on who goes first (if they can’t agree, go with whoever is alphabetically first) share for 1 minute. Might seem short but for this, it’s quite long. While they are sharing, the student who is supposed to be actively listening must put their hand over their mouth for the entire minute. It’s silly but maybe that’s why it works. If we all start at the same time, I can walk around and immediately know who should be sharing and who should be listening. We then switch partners and go again.
I then have them put together a poster that teaches the viewer about the California Gold Rush but as if historians only learned about those two people groups. I give them a checklist and explain the rubric and give them about 30 minutes to work. It really doesn’t need to be a master piece and my classes are 1 hr long so I’m wanting them to be finished in class. I like using posters every now and then because it allows for some student centered learning but I hate when the poster has to be finished at home because I can’t ensure that partners or groups are sharing the load equally. In my school, they really discourage group grades and want each grade to be individual. At the same time, we need students to learn how to work together well and my solution has been to keep group work class time specific so I can keep an eye on their workload delegation. If some partners aren’t working well together, I let them know which students need to step it up before the end of class if they want the same grade as their partners.
Full Picture*
*almost
After the students have completed their posters, yes there will be some stragglers but there are plenty of completed posters to continue the lesson, I tape them up to the walls around the class. Gallery walk time!
Before releasing them to look around, I hand out a worksheet that helps them to reflect. I tell them that I will be posting some of their finished work on Google Classroom to look at later for notes but it would be good for them to take notes on the other two perspectives that they haven’t learned yet. Lessons like these are always tricky because I have to find a balance between making sure they have notes to study for the test one day and wanting them to experience the topic differently than just in a lecture. By posting them on GC, I know students have access to them but I also make sure that the handout that asks for their reflections asks for information from all perspectives to insure they take the time to look at the other posters.
This goes on for 5 to 10 minutes depending on how much class time we have left. Often, the bell rings and the debrief is moved to the beginning of next class but I never want to skip over it because it’s the most important part.
Debrief
I like to find a poster that shows the Gold Rush from the Politician and 49er perspective and a poster that shows the Native and Chinese experience. I hold them up and ask what is different? What will you read on one poster but not the other?
Are they both still history of the California Gold Rush?
What do they have in common?
I love this discussion because it helps them to see the process that needs to happen when writing history. If I’m doing it right, we actually can get into some deep discussion that produces some disagreement among the students. I try to facilitate as much as possible and let them begin to make sense of history.
To end it, I ask what perspectives are missing from my lesson? Women, African Americans, Californios, other foreign miners. Sometimes my students think up groups that I haven’t even thought of. Earlier in the year we had a lesson on different lenses (social, political, economic, etc…) and we continue that conversation of exploring the past. While the California Gold Rush is a completed event in history, the history that has been written about it will never be complete.
If you are trying to find a creative way to teach the California Gold Rush, I hope this inspires you! If you need to teach it this week, tomorrow… next block?? Well, I have it all prepared and ready to share with you over on Teachers Pay Teachers.
I loved this lesson when I taught it so I might play around with other events in history to see if it would work. Can you think of any other event that has multiple people groups interacting and having vastly different experiences?