Lewis and Clark's journey west

Introduction

Hello everyone ! During this sequence, you will learn everything about the journey of two famous American explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. You will then be invited to join the expedition and to become an explorer yourself, so be ready!

 

Representation of the American territory at the beginning of the XiXth century and route of Lewis and Clark's journey

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Expedition)

Task

After watching a short video and reading one of the entries of Lewis' and Clark's jounal, you will embark on your own journey west. You'll then have to imagine you're explorers setting on a journey and you'll have to choose which role you're going to play within your group. So listen carfeully to Lewis and Clark's adventures on their expedition to discover the American West!

 A la fin de la séquence, vous serez capable de:

  • comprendre le récit d’un fait historique
  • comprendre et sélectionner des informations essentielles et les restituer
  • décrire une image avec du lexique approprié et spécifique ; faire le récit d’une expérience imaginée en exprimant clairement vos émotions et sentiments et en utilisant les temps et la complémentation verbale appropriés

Process

1. Watch this video to learn more about Lewis and Clark's journey.

  • Watch the video a first time. Take notes so as to be able to answer these basic questions: Who ? When ? Where ?
  • Now read these questions and watch this video a second time to find the correct answers.
  1. Who asked Lewis and Clark to go on this journey ?
  2. What was the official name of the group of explorers led by Lewis and Clark ?
  3. What was the aim of the journey ?
  4. Who is Scawagea and how did she help Lewis and Clark ? (cite at least two different ways)
  5. Why was this journey so important in American history ?

2. Click on the following link and look for the correct information to answer the following questions.

  • How did Thomas Jefferson imagine the West according to the website experts ? Did his vision of the West prove true ?
  • What was the historical significance of the expedition for Indian tribes ? In other words how did it impact them ?
  • Cite at least one animal encountered by Lewis and Clark during this journey and describe this encounter to your partner.
  • Using the interactive trail map you can find on this website, colour the states Lewis and Clark's expedition went through on the USA map your teacher gave you. Then compare your map with your partner.

3. Now that you have gathered so much information about Lewis and Clark journey, make your own timeline of their journey west so as to summarise the main steps of this wonderful adventure ! Be as creative as you wish.

4. Download this pdf file and read the three extracts from Lewis and Clark's journal.

  • Read the three journal entries and highlight the key words.
  • Both Lewis and Clark cite different things that men on the expedition could eat. Can you list all of them ?
  • List the difficulties encountered by Lewis and Clark. What are the reasons for these difficulties ?
  • Now try and give a title to each of these journal entries.

5. Now it's your turn ! For the final task of this sequence you have to work in pairs. Here is a grid in which you can find the different roles you can play on the expedition.

Role

 Task

The group leader

Is the one who keeps in touch with Thomas Jefferson (in his entry, he can for instance say what he recently told the president regarding the course of the expedition). Describes the difficulties they have recently met (lack of food, hostile indian tribes..). Decides what they will do in the following days (stay at an indian camp to discuss with the natives / focus on looking for food / stay in a particular spot and explore its surroundings)

The naturalist

Will have to talk about the natural species recently found (animals, plants..) as well as about the encounters with the indians.

The cartographer

Will have to show on a map where they are on their journey, talk about the specificities of the landscape (Is his group currently exploring mountains or a valley ? Is there a river nearby ?). Decides in which direction the group will head next.

Have you chosen your role ? Ok, here are the instructions you now have to follow to realise this final task:

1. You've just set off on your journey and you'll have to make a vlog to tell your viewers about the course of the expedition. Be careful to respect what is required of you depending on your role.

2. Imagine at least two events that occured at the beginning of your journey.

3. Now take notes to prepare what you're going to say in front of the camera. You'll have to use the vocabulary seen in class and also use at least two relatives in "which" and two sentences with the structure V1+TO+BV2.

4. Be sure you clearly indicate the chronology of the day you've chosen to talk about.

5. Before you start filming, rehearse what you're going to say using your notes to ensure you'll speak clearly and fluently during your vlog.

6. When you're ready, start filming your video and don't forget to enjoy yourselves !

Evaluation

The originality of your content and the staging of your video will be graded out of four points. 

Concerning the quality of your English, you'll be graded based on the following criteria:

(Grille modifiée, source originale: http://pedagogie.ac-toulouse.fr/langues-vivantes/IMG/pdf/Evaluation_gri…)

Conclusion

Hope you had fun on your journey with Lewis and Clark. For those of you who want to go further, you can play to one of these two little exploration games:

http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/into/index.html

or

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/west/