Local fifth-graders create showcase of Lewis & Clark Expedition
As a culmination of their social studies unit, fifthgraders at New Canaan Country School invited parents, teachers and younger students to an experiential simulation of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The students created hand-made visual displays, delivered speeches and wrote essays to showcase the Corps of Discovery Expedition.
Visitors were invited to follow the trail of tables set in a loose timeline to represent the expedition across the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase and explore important stops along the way. Guests also crossed a suspension bridge contributed by ninth-grade woodshop students that served as the Gateway to the West.
“I wanted to really highlight that the fort was made of wood; cottonwood lumber actually, from the riverbank — these really big logs — to help everyone realize how cold that might have been, and difficult to make,” said fifth-grader Hudson Burr of New Canaan, who created a diorama of Fort Mandan out of Popsicle sticks as a replica of the encampment that the Lewis and Clark Expedition built for wintering over in 1804 to 1805. “Temperatures got down to below freezing, and many of the people on the expedition got frostbite.”
Some of the students who took part included Maddie Ortiz of Stamford, Max Tangen of Rowayton, Caspar Brazier of Rowayton, Eliza Villari of Greenwich
and Nico Cetrulo of Darien.
“This is the perfect opportunity to integrate our social studies, reading and writing curricula, while also celebrating students’ creativity,” said fifth-grade teacher Wendy Root, who together with other fifthgrade teachers Andrew Bevan and Fay Venetsanos, and apprentice teachers Caroline Aronowitz, Kat Norton and Clay Kontulis, led their classes through the unit.
“Witnessing the students’ excitement as they share their knowledge and projects with visitors makes all their hard work worthwhile,” Root said.
President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory with a goal of finding a western route across the continent and studying the area's plants,
animal life and geography.
The expedition ran from Aug. 31, 1803, to Sept. 25, 1806, and was led by Capt. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The crew made its way westward from Camp Dubois, or Camp Wood, in Illinois and crossed the Continental Divide before reaching the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. Much of the journey was under the guidance of a Lemni Shoshone woman, Sacagawea, who traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean , helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations and contributing to the expedition's knowledge of natural history in different regions.
New Canaan Country School is a co-ed independent day school for students in Pre-K through Grade 9 in Westchester and Fairfield counties.