The Lost LA Curriculum Project added new lesson plans and debuted an updated website with resources for K-12 teachers based on episodes from the Emmy Award-winning Lost LA series co-produced by the USC Libraries and PBS SoCal.
The resources include lesson plans, classroom activities, and readings that help Southern California teachers use local stories and primary historical sources to engage their students in keeping with California’s history-social science instructional framework.
The lesson plans are created by teachers working with the UCLA History-Geography Project in collaboration with the USC Libraries, PBS SoCal, and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
The latest lesson plans and guides include:
- Post-war Multiracial Solidarity (Grade 11), created by Miguel Sandoval for the “From Little Tokyo to Crenshaw” Lost LA episode;
- Community-led Organizations (Grade 3), created by Marissa Matich for the “Shindana Toy Company” Lost LA episode;
- History of Local Astronomy (Grade 11), created by Frank Salcedo-Fierro for the “Discovering the Universe” Lost LA episode;
- Rail Systems of Then and Now (Grades 3-5), created by Maia Ruiz for the “Who Killed the Red Car?” Lost LA episode;
- Manzanar Internment Camp (Grade 12), created by Vanessa Herrera for the “Three Views of Manzanar” Lost LA episode.
The Lost LA Curriculum Project now features 17 lesson plans developed by Southern California educators on topics ranging from the history of Dodger Stadium to Tongva communities before and after Spanish arrival, L.A.’s environmental history, segregation in L.A. leisure activities, and the region’s rapid growth during the 20th century. The 5 newly developed lesson plans will soon join 12 previously developed lesson plans now available via PBS Learning Media. The resources integrate with Google Classroom and other platforms for K-12 teaching.
The project brings together history educators and scholars to create inclusive, relevant teaching materials on the local histories explored by Lost LA episodes. The lesson plans align the stories of Southern California neighborhoods with state educational content and common core standards. Teachers can navigate lessons by topic, watch episodes, and find related readings.