Teachers, save “Life in the California Gold Rush” to assign it to your class.

Teacher Notes (not visible to students)

This activity uses a short historical passage about the California Gold Rush and checks comprehension with a variety of question types. Use the reading fluency recording to hear each student's oral reading and to note accuracy, expression, and pacing. The multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, and short-answer questions are auto-gradable; review automated scores for accuracy before final reporting. For the open-ended paragraph, high-quality answers identify the main idea (gold discovery led to rapid migration), include relevant supporting details (routes to California, tools miners used, crowded camps, new towns), and explain consequences (population growth and new communities). For the multimedia response, a strong submission clearly explains one way life changed in California and uses specific examples from the passage; students who give vague or unsupported statements will need prompting to add more detail. Grade open-ended responses simply as correct or incorrect based on whether the student includes the passage’s main idea and at least two supporting details.