Welcome to TechKNOW Associates' Blazing Trails with Lewis and Clark page. This project was developed through a partnership between TechKNOW Associates and World Book Inc. To download a copy of the project, you will need a userid and password. Please go to the Terms of Use page for more information.

TechKNOW Associates Corporation can provide expert, onsite staff development to insure that teachers and children fully implement this and other projects at a reasonable cost. We will train teachers in the classroom with their students, model lessons, and help them integrate technology into their curriculum through a project-based approach.

Links sometimes change. If you come across a bad link, please email our web master at webmaster@techknowassociates.com

New projects are being developed and added to our site on a regular basis. Visit often.

Blazing Trails with Lewis and Clark

It is the year 1803 and you are 19 years old. You’ve been exploring and hunting the lands for fifty miles around your family’s Kentucky farm all your life. There’s little left for you to discover and you are tired of the same old routines and places. You crave new adventures and challenges…

The above is an excerpt from the project scenario that you can use to introduce Blazing Trails with Lewis and Clark to your students. The scope of this project is to involve your class in a simulation of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Students will learn content, research, language, and critical thinking skills as they travel with Lewis and Clark to explore the uncharted lands of the Louisiana Purchase.

Blazing Trails with Lewis and Clark is based upon the historical inquiry model of instruction, which calls for students to personalize history by conducting close, “meaningful” inquiries into historic events. It capitalizes on the intrinsically creative nature of upper elementary and middle school learners by challenging them to learn about history through the creation of products that demonstrate comprehension and higher-order thinking skills.

Designed for grades five through eight, Blazing Trails with Lewis and Clark is an interdisciplinary learning experience driven by the national standards of several disciplines including social studies, geography, language arts, mathematics, and the arts. The project includes a comprehensive introduction that assesses and provides students with background knowledge, three distinct but interrelated learning phases, and a culminating event in which students present their work and demonstrate their learning.

Phase One: The Deal. Students will gain experience working with primary source documents by translating select articles of the Louisiana Purchase treaty into common English. They then will assume the roles of European Americans or Native Americans, generate a pro- or anti-Louisiana Purchase pamphlet, and engage in a debate. Finally, students will reflect on their learning through a metacognitive journal entry.

Phase Three: The People. Students will “experience” the Native American nations of the Louisiana Purchase. They will research various nations, producing a multimedia report that includes an “interview” with a Native American and a representation of an “artifact.” As a way of summarizing the project, students will publish books that demonstrate their learning and the products that they have created.

The Culminating Event: The Explorers Speak! The culminating event is an opportunity for students to celebrate their achievement by presenting and displaying their learning through multimedia and other technologies to an audience of their peers and other invited guests.

To download a copy of this project, you will need a userid and password. Please go to the Terms of Use page for more information. If you have a userid and password, click here.