Liz's Entry #3: Lewis and Clark's Expedition

A Second Grade Lesson on Lewis and Clark

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801 he asked Meriwether Lewis to be his secretary. Jefferson wanted to know about the West and after a lot of training he sent Lewis and William Clark to find out about the West by traveling. While on their trip the explored the land that had been purchased by France, the Louisiana territory. They also studied plant and animal life, and learned about the Native American groups who lived their. Clark also drew maps of the land. Jefferson wanted Lewis and Clark to make friends with the Native American groups they came in contact with. Along the way they hired a man to translate and his wife came along. His wife, Sacajawea, became the guide that helped Lewis and Clark reach the west coast. Due to her they realized they would not be able to reach the west coast by water alone, but would also need to travel by land. They needed horses to be able to travel by land, and didn’t know how they would get them. Sacajawea’s long lost brother, Cameahwait, ended up providing Lewis and Clark with their horses. (Content)

Read the story How We Crossed the West: The Adventures of Lewis & Clark by Rosalyn Schanzer, this will give students background knowledge of Lewis and Clark’s exploration. Ask questions about the story to see what students recall. (DOK 1) (CC.1.2.2.B, CC.8.5.6-8B) After that, I will provide students with a map of the United States. We will graph the sections of the map that show the original 13 colonies. We will then color to show the land that Lewis and Clark explored to get to the Mississippi River, and finally the land purchased from France in 1803. (DOK 2)

One of the jobs of Lewis and Clark was to find and classify animal and plant life in the West. The class will walk around the outside of the school and investigate the area to see what types of plants and animals they see. (DOK 3) They will then choose a plant or animal they see and hypothesize based on what they know about plants and animals, what they think the specimen may be. (DOK 3) This is something that Lewis and Clark did during their travels. Students will classify the specimen as a plant or an animal, give the name of it, and draw a small diagram of it. After that they will write a small description to analyze the specimen, and describe it so that future scientists would be able to recognize it. (DOK 4) (CC.8.6.6-8.B)

The final thing we would do with this lesson is read a poem called Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark by Carter Skeel. This is a great summary of what Lewis and Clark did. (CC.1.2.2.L) (Creative Idea)

Domains:

1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1a, 2b, 2c, 2e, 2b, 3c

The creative idea came from a PDF I found online from the Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools.

http://savannahtah.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/LewisClark-K-2Instructional-Unit.pdf The content came from the book A History of US The New Nation by Joy Hakim.