Grade 5 Lesson at a Glance: Chapter 15, Lesson 3

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
America Will Be

Lesson at a Glance
Chapter 15, Lesson 3: Migrating to California and Utah (pp. 383-388)

The Big Idea
Framework Concept: Change The search for gold and religious freedom sent people to California and Utah.

Ask volunteers to point to California on a map. Read aloud the introduction on page 383 and ask students why so many people would be willing to risk everything to search for gold in California. Then talk about who the gold seekers were and what their lives were like in mining towns, including the prejudice and violence there.

Ask students what they remember about the Pilgrims and the Puritans in the New England colonies. Then discuss the Mormons, their reasons for settling in Utah, and their lives once they arrived there. Work with students to make a Venn Diagram showing differences and similarities between the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England and the Mormons in Utah.

Lesson Outline
Use the Lesson Outline to preview the content of the lesson. You may wish to print it for your students as a guide during reading.

Check for Understanding

Ask students to write a newspaper article that tells about the discovery of gold in California and describes life in a mining town.
On a world map, have students find and mark all of the places where forty-niners came from and then draw line (or mark with string) the journeys they would have had to make from their homes to northern California.

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