Lewis & Clark Expedition Challenge 2

A couple years ago with my last loop of 8th graders, we did a Lewis & Clark Expedition Video Challenge.  It went awesome.  The students loved it--they were glued to their macs for the entire class period creating and editing their movie, and they had to be: they only had ONE class period to get their movie completed and uploaded to the class YouTube channel.  However, they weren't going into this challenge cold turkey: we had spent the previous 2 days discussing the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson, and Lewis & Clark.  They had a storyboard and a scavenger hunt activity to pull information from for their movie.

Here's the directions they were tasked with for their video (and note: they did have untit 5pm to upload their movie...just in case they didn't have time to do it in class and/or the YouTube class username/password was log-jammed).

After a quick intro in class (and a viewing of a past example), they got to work on their videos.  It was awesome seeing them so tuned-in and taking their work from the previous days and turning it into an iMovie. 

Check out a few of the students' videos below (or you can check out the entire Lewis & Clark video challenge playlist from 2012 and 2014 here)...I hope you are impressed with their one-class period video products as I am!

Lewis & Clark Expedition Challenge

In social studies we've spent some time lately learning about Westward Expansion and groups who "paved the way" for the US's expansion into the west.  One of those groups was the Corps of Discovery, or most commonly known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

To conclude our journey with Lewis and Clark, students were issued a one-class period challenge: create a short movie detailing the Lewis and Clark expedition.  Students were able to pull information from the National Geographic Lewis and Clark Expedition website, from the readings and storyboard activity we did in class, as well as information they gathered from the Lewis and Clark video clip they watched earlier in the week.

The students were given 6 simple rules that their video MUST follow.  These rules were:

1. Must use iMovie
2. Must use the images from the folder Ms. Pepin sent you (you don’t have to use ALL of the images)
3. CANNOT use any other images/videos other than what’s given to you!!!
4. Must give a detailed description of the Lewis and Clark expedition (you decide how you are going to creatively get this description across in your movie)
5. Must have music
6. Must finish BEFORE the end of class--export and submitted to the dropbox!

Once again, I was amazed with what my students were able to produce in just 45 minutes or less!  Although they only had less than an hour to do this, I was so impressed with what they came up with, and it really showcased a culmination of what they've learned about Westward Expansion and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Below you can view some of the submitted videos students came up with.  Again, these were created in less than an hour...they're not "polished," or what they'd be if the students had more time to work on them, but I think it is a great example of the excellent work students are capable of producing in a limited amount of time.  Super impressive! :)