Learning with Lewis and Clark

An inquiry lesson plan is made up of the 5 E's: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. On the contrary to many beliefs the 5 E's can even been used in Social Studies. At this idea I was a little shocked and I was really concerned about creating an inquiry lesson for Social Studies, but it was actually a lot easier than I thought !


As an inquiry lesson my group and I included a lot of technology in our lesson because it only seemed fit. We began our lesson with a review using a wordcloud.

Our students recognized William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, Exploreres, and Scientist which was a great start to our lesson plan. Then we did a quick review of Lewis and Clark because our whole inquiry lesson was about their expedition through the Louisiana Territory. We started with a Voki which gave the directions, Lewis explains to the kids that something went wrong with time and the students had to help Lewis and Clark relearn about the land. Our students were broken into groups and at each table there were iPads and QR codes and all of the groups had to go through each station and complete the task presented to them. Station one was about the animals Lewis and Clark saw and the students had to analyze journal entries on the animals and write down their interpretation, station two had the students organize all of the plants Lewis and Clark discovered on a timeline, station three had the students do a round robin reading and then play a game similar to Kahoot!, station four had students choose a hardship that Lewis and Clark faced and draw a picture and write two sentences describing it, lastly station five had students study about the Native American tribes Lewis and Clark meet and write three facts about them.

Our lesson plan was very engaging the most popular station was the flower station and I really enjoyed working with the students in small groups. The only thing I would change about the lesson plan is our time management because we went over our time again which was very frustrating. In addition I would change some of the wording on the worksheet because I know some students did not what interpretation or hardship means, so some time was spent teaching the students what the words meant to allow them to complete the task.

Now that inquiry is out of the way we can move to our cooperative lesson plan which I am most excited for ! Check out my group member Megan's experience at fieldwork today here.