California Gold Rush: The long journey

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (California Gold Rush mini-series, episode 243) is a short documentary about how the gold seekers of 1849 travelled to California. They came from all over the world, from Mexico, Chile, China, Europe and Australia, but most were Americans from the east of the country, and there were no trains to the west yet. The first way was by ship around South America, past Cape Horn, where the storms are terrible: about 18,000 miles and six to eight months. The second way was shorter: a ship to Panama, a crossing of the jungle in canoes, on mules and on foot, where many caught dangerous diseases, then another ship. The third way, the most popular, was over land in wagons pulled by oxen, more than 2,000 miles across plains, rivers, deserts and mountains, in about six months. The episode ends on the deep lines that thousands of wagon wheels left in the rock of the old trail.

It is a listening comprehension episode in the past simple: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app, 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (wagons, oxen, Cape Horn). The closing question (Which way would you choose to go to California?) opens a short class discussion where learners compare distance, time and danger.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (an 1850 painting of the Panama crossing, Bierstadt's wagons crossing the plains, the wagon lines in the rock at Guernsey, Wyoming), key words and the 10 questions; a one-page pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key are also included. Learners should know the past simple and there was / there were. The script explains its new words as it goes (wagons, oxen, Panama, Cape Horn). The maps on screen show the three ways.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-travel-and-migration ("Voyages et migrations"), Cycle 4. The episode targets CEFR level B1-.