Read Prereading page 123 in your textbooks. Consider the kinds of information you would include in a journal such as the one Lewis and Clark wrote. Imagine you are one of the members of the Corps of Discovery and write a day’s journal entry from that person’s point of view. You are not limited to Lewis’s and Clark’s points of view, but can choose Sacagawea, Charbonneau, or one of the unnamed members of the Corps.
1. Follow along in your textbook as your teacher reads aloud the first journal entry. Discuss as a class how the abbreviations, the misspellings, and the lack of punctuation affect your understanding of the text. Then, draw a three-column chart on a piece of paper. In the first column, write the date of the entry. In the second column, write the author’s name (it will be either Lewis or Clark). In the third column, write a brief summary of the information contained in the journal entry.
2. Continue reading the remainder of the journal on your own. At the end of each entry, stop and fill in your chart. Which entries do you find easiest to understand? Which events do you find most interesting? Why?
If you are having difficulty summarizing information, make sure you understand the vocabulary used by Lewis and Clark. Both men use dated language, abbreviations, and nautical terms. They also incorporate misspellings and omit punctuation. If you encounter an unfamiliar word, first check the footnotes and the Words for Everyday Use for definitions. If the word is not there, try to determine meaning by using context clues. Also, try to decipher whether the word is spelled properly. You might check a dictionary to verify spelling and definition.
Meet with two or three other students and compare your charts. In your group, discuss how the style and content of Lewis’s entries compare with Clark’s.