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Lesson Title: 
César Chávez Makes it to California
 
Grade Level:  
Grade Five Lesson 4 
 
Unit of Study: 
U.S. History and Geography: A New Nation
 
History-Social Science Standard:
5.8.5   Describe the continued migration of Mexican settlers into Mexican Territories of the West and Southwest.
 
Correlation to K-8 California Adopted Textbooks: 
Harcourt Brace: Early United States.  Unit 6: Our Nation Grows.  Chapter 12: The Way West.
 
McGraw-Hill.  A New Nation.  Unit 7: Westward Expansion and Change.  Chapters 16 and 17.
 
Setting of Context:
Students should have biographical information on César Chávez that includes that he was born in Yuma, Arizona and that he lived with his family on his grandfather's farm.

Many Mexicans left Mexico in search of freedom.  César's grandfather, Césario, was one of them.  He wanted to escape from the hacienda system in which he was no more than a slave.  They reached Arizona, where he homesteaded a piece of land.  The Chávez family worked and lived on the land.  César's father, Librado, helped his father take care of the land.
 
When he married Juana Estrada, Librado became a businessman by his own right.  He ran a grocery store, car repair shop, and a pool hall.  César's early memories of life on the land are of happy times.
 
The Great Depression hit many families and changed their lives forever.  At first, the Chávez family was not greatly affected, but soon their clients, many of whom were family members, could not pay for the items they had received on credit.  Librado soon owed a large sum of money in back taxes.  He eventually lost the land and the family was forced to leave.  They joined the trek of many other families to find work in the fields.  This is how César began his life as a migrant worker.
 
Focus Questions:
Why did the Chávez family move?

Were their rights being violated?

What problems did Mexican Americans face in the 1930s and 1940s?

How did César's early years influence his work as an adult?
 
Expected Learning Outcomes:
Students will identify the reasons that the Chávez family moved west.  
Students will identify the causes the led the Chávez family to lose their land.  
Students will describe the hardships faced by the Chávez family and many others who moved west during their travels and when they arrived.  
Students will be able to trace on a map the Chávez' route to California.  
Students will trace the crop calendar that many farm workers lived by.
 
Assessments:
Travel diary from the perspective of a migrant farm worker
Map of route followed by the Chávez family
Time line of crops and the seasons in which they are harvested
Fact finding sheet on produce
Graph of yearly sales of selected of produce compared to yearly cost of labor for harvesting the crop
 
Key Concepts:
The struggle of the migrant farm worker
 
Essential Vocabulary:
homestead
Great Depression
season
crop
migrant

Primary Sources:
Maps of crops and the seasons in which they are harvested
Newspaper ads or circulars from grocery stores that have ads for produce

Visuals:
Map of the United States
Pictures of migrant workers
Picture of the Dust Bowl (text)

Procedure

Motivation:
Ask students to cut out pictures of the produce that they eat.  They will glue these on a piece of drawing paper and then they will share out in small groups.
 
Guided Instruction:
 Part I: The food we eat
Now that you have learned what some of your favorite types of produce are, you will be conducting some research to discover more facts.
 
Practice/Assessment Opportunity:
Take the names of the items selected by students.  Write these on strips of paper and place in a container.  Each group will select four items.  Once the items are selected, distribute the Fact Finding Sheet.  A sheet should be completed for each item.  You can use any sources available to you: books, the Internet, interviews with produce workers at market, and so on.

This lesson should take a few sessions in order for students to find resources.  Once they have completed the assignment, have groups share their findings.  The sheets can be compiled into a book for future reference.  Students may also post findings on the web page that was created.
 
Part II: Fruits of Labor
The fact-finding sheets should be used to dialogue about the amount of money made on items in comparison to the amount of money that is paid to the farm workers.
 
Guided Instruction:
The plight of the farm worker has always been that they are not justly compensated for the backbreaking work that they do on a daily basis.  In your fact finding, you found out how much laborers are paid to harvest a crop and how much companies make on a yearly basis on certain crops.  While there are other costs involved, the farm worker is still under compensated for the work they do.  Many of them cannot afford to buy the crops that they harvest.
 
This was the case for the Chávez family as well as most migrant farm workers.  This was one of the primary reasons that César became a labor organizer.  He felt that all people should be treated equally and with dignity.  He wanted people everywhere to understand that farm workers labored very hard to bring food to the tables of others.
 
Practice/Assessment Opportunity:
Your next assignment is to research the following:
1)	wages of migrant farm workers since 1940
2)	select one crop and research its yearly sales in dollars since 1940
 
You will then put this information into a spreadsheet and create a graph from the spreadsheet.
 
Part III: On the Move
Setting the Context:
César Chávez' parents were forced off their land and had to join many other families who were looking for work in the fields.  Listen to this narrated tour of the movement of the Chávez family.  As you listen, mark on the map the route that they followed.
 
Narrated tour of the Chávez' family travel routes once they left Arizona.  It should have text and graphics.  The students will be given a map of the United States and as the narration guides them, will mark the cities and states that the family traveled through on their way to California.
 
Enrichment:
Visit your local market and interview the produce manager or worker.  Ask them to read the labels on the boxes of produce.  Keep a log of the different places and then create a map that shows the item and where it comes from.

Fact Finding Sheet
 
You are responsible for finding the following information about your item:
Name of item:
 
Current market value per pound:

Where it is grown:

Map showing location where it is grown:

Labor used to harvest:

Hourly pay of labor:

Primary consumer:

Where it is exported:

Yearly sales in dollars:

Other products made from item: