As mentioned in “communities of the past” change has occurred where we live. Change also occurred out west during the Gold Rush. The book “ “Wild West” shows how the west changed during the Gold Rush. It is a large book with big pictures that will give your students a better idea of “change”. From this conversation you can talk with your students about change in your neighborhood.

“Wild West” has beautiful pictures that allow the children to really see the changes that took place out west A neat feature of this book is the side of the book has a handy thumb index that allows children to easily flip to a time period they are interested in seeing.

After talking about Change out west,you can Introduce the Gold Rush This book may take A few days to read !

Because you are planning to take your students to Thermal City Gold Mine, make sure that you really emphasize HOW the gold is mined. These particular pages shows scenes that they will see when they go to the gold mine and observe people looking for gold.

As you read the book “ Gold Rush”, keep an ongoing graphic organizer about gold mining so that you can refer to it everyday that you discuss gold mining. As you read the book and talk about it, you can refer to the pictures I have posted so that they can get a “real life“ idea of what gold mining is about.

This is how Thermal City Gold Mine mines Their own gold with large machines Here is a close up picture of the sand and Sediments that are left behind after it is Filtered through the drum.

These people are mining using an electric machine.

This man is doing gold mining without the machines!

Now you are ready to go on a Field STUDY! Tell your students that they are going to “head west” to the gold rush. BUT instead of mining for gold, they are going to mine for precious gems! They are going to document their trip by keeping in mind that they have a mission. They need to find something interesting on their trip that they would want to write about. Depending on the age of the students, they can ask you to use the camera and take a picture themselves, or ask you to take the picture for them. As you take pictures, write down the name of the students as you take the pictures so you know whose pictures belong to whom. Save the pictures in a folder on a flash drive so it will be easy to put the pictures in their slideshow. The next day take the kids to the computer lab and show them how to open Powerpoint, get a blank slide and a text box.( Have patience!!!!) Have your students write 2-4 sentences about what they took a picture of and go around and put the pictures in the kid’s slideshows.