FREE GOLD!

A WebQuest for 4th Grade/Social Studies

Designed by:
Lily Chen
Pamela King
Craig Wilsie

INTRODUCTION

It is 1849. You are tired of not having enough money and food. You want to do something that will make things better for you and your family. Well... what you can do? You've seen posters saying that if you make the trip to California, FREE GOLD IS EVERYWHERE! So you decide to make the trip and stake your claim to fame and fortune!

Click on the GOLD and the PAN below for a brief overview of the discovery of gold, the rush to California, and why it is important to Californian history.

Before you leave on you trip, you need to figure out a few things. Click on the questions to discover the answers!

1. HOW WILL YOU GET THERE? (there are no cars, trains, or planes in 1848)
2. What do you need to take with you (food, water, etc.) if you go BY WAGON? What do you need to take with if you go BY BOAT?

TASK

For this once in a lifetime experience, your job will be to CREATE A DIARY using the information you will learn on the Internet. You will create a person to be in the year 1849. Click on the pictures below to read about the people of 1849. Use the information to help you decide what kind of person you want to be:

After reading about the things that happened to people during the GOLD RUSH, now you will pretend as if you are a person from back then. You will invent this person, and you try to think like this person (e.g., How do they feel? What do they like? Who do they miss?), and you will write this person's DIARY.

PROCESS

Your diary will have 5 entries from 5 different days. You will use the diary provided by the teacher. When writing in your diary, the date must be written on each day. Keep in mind that this is 1849, so many of the things you have now were not invented yet (for example, radios, telephones, next-day mail). Here are some questions that you must answer on each day.

Diary Entry 1: About you

1. Who are you?
2. Where are you from?
3. What is your job or role in your town?
4. Tell us about your family.
5. How are you traveling to California? (describe the route you will take)
6. What did you bring with you?
7. What do you see on the way?

Diary Entries 2-3: Your travels

1. Where are you?
2. Who have you met?
3. How do you feel?
4. Note any surprises.

Diary Entry 4-5: You have made it to California

1. What do you see?
2. Who have you met? (e.g., Mark Twain, Levi Strauss, James Marshall)
3. How do you feel? (e.g., overwhelmed, tired, excited, afraid)
4. Was it what you expected? Note any surprises.
5. What do you need to get started mining?
6. How are the prices of things?

Click here for an example of a DIARY someone else created (your entries should be longer than this example's, and may contain a few day's worth of events).

After you have completed your 5-day diary, you will be assigned to a group with 3 other students who have different characters. Your job is to tell about your character and listen to your group members tell about their characters. After reading about the GOLD RUSH, you will work with your group members to write your own GOLD RUSH PLAY. You will be the "GOLD RUSH PLAYERS"! Use the information from your diaries to help you write your script. Your group will read the 5-7 minute script in front of the class.

EVALUATION

You will be graded on the following items:

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4
Factual / Historical Accuracy	Very little evidence supports diary entries.	Some diary entries are supported by research.	Most diary entries are supported by research.	All diary entries are supported by research.
Diary Content	There are 1-2 diary entries that answer some of the questions.	There are 2-3 diary entries that answer some of the questions.	There are 4-5 diary entries that answer most of the questions.	There are 5 diary entries that answer all the questions.
Spelling and Grammar	There are 5-8 spelling and/or grammatical errors.	There are 3-5 spelling and/or grammatical errors.	There are 1-2 spelling and/or grammatical errors.	There are no spelling and/or grammatical errors.
Participation	Seldom on-task every day.	Somewhat on-task every day.	Mostly on-task every day.	On-task every day (active participation in every assignment daily).
Group's Script	The script is unclear in telling the character's stories.	The script is somewhat clear in telling the character's stories.	The script is mostly clear in telling the character's stories.	The script effectively tells the character's stories.

CONCLUSION

You will know some people of the GOLD RUSH. You will have a better understanding of the experiences in their daily lives and surroundings. Also, you will have experienced the excitement of performing a script in front of the class.

CREDITS & REFERENCES

If you want additional information about the GOLD RUSH, look at these websites:

Gold Rush Women
Gold Rush
Gold Fever
The California Gold Rush
Museum of the City of San Francisco (Timeline)
The Gold Rush
Museum of the City of San Francisco

The next two have a "MOTHER LODE" of website listings:

Gold Rush History Links
California Gold History

The photographs and paintings were from the above-mentioned references and links.

The WebQuest Page - information/training materials
Design Patterns - template for WebQuest

We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuest. On the line after the original author's name, you may add Modified by (your name) on (date). If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL.

Last updated on July 2, 2003. Based on a template from The WebQuest Page