Levi Strauss Gets a Big Idea is a highly fabricated tale about one man’s ingenuity in the midst of the California Gold rush. This tall tale challenges students to sift out facts from fiction through text comparison, wordplay, and dramatic play. Students will “mine” photography, music, slang, and symbolism, exploring how desperation leads to innovation and how their own bright ideas can be stitched together to make an impact.
Before you begin...
Each Artful Reading Module is flexibly designed for a 2-3 week duration. Lessons are marked for Before-, During-, or After-Reading to guide your planning. We have added a sample of an After Reading lesson entitled Peace. Love. Light Bulb. for you to preview. Each lesson is designed in an easy to read format, with standards, materials needed, and step-by-step directions to ensure you are fully prepared when it’s time to deliver.
This module contains the following lessons:
- Roll the Dice & Flip a Coin
- What Was the Gold Rush?
- Mining Images (centers):
- Talking Heads
- Album Cover
- Before & After
- Enter the Landscape
- Tinkered Metaphors
- Panning for Gold
- Quality Never Goes Out of Style
- Levi Strauss Gets a Bright Idea
- Dang!
- The Days of ‘49
- Peace. Love. Light Bulb.
- Bright Ideas
- I Have an Idea
The summative writing tasks will invite students into a PBL experience.
While conducting self and group initiated research, the compelling question
students will explore is What bright ideas do we have? Optional Extension Tasks are also available to stretch the module further.
Standards Matrix
This module is aligned to National Literacy standards and National Arts Anchor standards. For your reference, we have added images of the standards matrix for this module.
Key Vocabulary
Fabricated, Suffix, Prospector, Symbolism, Mining, Panning, Pyrite, Fool’s Gold,
Wordplay, Slang, Symbolism