The voyage of the Corps of Discovery is a topic rich with possibility for the elementary school learner. In addition to geography and the natural resources of the American continent, this narrative provides opportunities to learn about the early years of our country's history and to go beyond the simple narratives of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark to address how diverse peoples and individuals played roles in this unfolding story.

We began with a brief overview of the historical context and then read the letters from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwhether Lewis and then from Lewis to Clark that launched the journey.  Since the Corps was charged with exploring "the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, ...may offer the most direct & practicable wter communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce" (Thomas Jefferson was still searching for the elusive Northwest Passage) and to learn about the people and resources in the west, we focused on three key elements in this study.

1. While reading excerpts of President Jefferson's letter to Meriwhether Lewis and reading portions of trade books, we determined the goals of the Corps and the historical context of the time.  We wrote up and illustrated brief summaries of this context using a template that is attached below.

2. We conducted scientific observations of animals as described in a lesson available through the Smithsonian's education website. To do this, we studied one of Clark's  journal descriptions of an animal and then practiced the skill of description by visiting and studying relevant dioramas in the   Hall of North American Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History.

3. We broke into groups to study native cultures that the Corps encountered.  Groups visited dioramas and museum displays of cultural artifacts from a nation in the Plains Indian Hall at the AMNH and then read about the Corps' encounters with these people in various trade books and on line (a resource list of websites and books is attached.) As a result of this study, we sketched out a story board of an event we read about and then wrote a letter to President Jefferson describing what we learned. 

To synthesize our learning, we used a lesson we found in Making Sense of History on adding to a historical account.  I took excerpts from David Adler's  A Picture Book of Lewis and Clark and we added information we learned to the text.  This process required the learners to pull together information from across the unit of study. It also made visible the process of how we bring prior knowledge to a text to understand and question it.