History of Dodger Stadium

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In this lesson, students will examine the current home of Dodger Stadium’s complex evolution. Students will view segments of Lost LA’s "Before the Dodgers" and move through five rotations (explorations) to examine a variety of primary source documents. Within each exploration, students will analyze the growth and change of the area surrounding the current Dodger Stadium, while filling out graphic organizers. As a culminating activity, students will create an artistic representation/timeline of Mount Outlook, drawing upon information gathered in the graphic organizers created in the explorations. Students will use key phrases, symbols and drawings to create five “layers” of the physical mountain, with the top layer being an imagined future use of the space “after the Dodgers.”

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Long before Sandy Koufax threw Dodger Stadium's first pitch, and even before the first residents moved into Chavez Ravine, there were the Elysian Hills. Raised up by tectonic forces, and carved into deep ravines by the ancient precursor of the Los Angeles River, these hills have meant many things to many people. They were a refuge from floods for the region's native Tongva Indians, and then a source of quarried stone soon after the city fell under American sovereignty. In this episode, "Lost LA" explores the various ways Southern California's inhabitants have used the hills around Dodger Stadium. The program looks at an old lithographic view of L.A. as drawn from an Elysian hilltop, the vanished neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, and a massive construction project that reshaped the land into a modern baseball palace.

Lesson: What happens to a place across time?

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Content Standards

3.1: Students describe the physical and human geography and use maps, tables, graphs, photographs, and charts to organize information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context.

3.1.1. Identify geographical features in their local region (e.g., deserts, mountains, valleys, hills, coastal areas, oceans, lakes).

3.1.2. Trace the ways in which people have used the resources of the local region and modified the physical environment (e.g., a dam constructed upstream changed a river or coastline).

3.3: Students draw from historical and community resources to organize the sequence of local historical events and describe how each period of settlement left its mark on the land.

CCSS Standards

RI 3.3: Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time,sequence, and cause/effect.

RI.3.7: Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text.

W.3.7 Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of a topic.

W.3.8: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources, and sort evidence into provided categories.

SL3.1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

SL3.3: Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail

SL.3.4: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.