Credit: Courtesy of The National Archives
A 2,000-mile trek across a continent—with no idea what awaits you on the other side. Tell your students to put on their traveling shoes and prepare for the journey of their lives!
In this lesson, students compare imagined travel experiences of their own with the actual experiences of 19th-century pioneers. After creating, as a class, oral stories about contemporary cross-country journeys, students learn about the experiences of the emigrants who traveled on the Oregon Trail. They then create works of historical fiction in the form of picture books, drawing upon the information they have learned.
What was it like to travel west on the Oregon Trail? How has the experience of travel changed over the course of the last 150 years?
Explain to students that they are now going to learn about the experiences of people who really did move across the country—the pioneers who traveled west on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. Show them a map of the route the emigrants traveled, available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website The Oregon Trail. Click on Historic Sites on the Trail to view the entire route; then click on each state for a close-up view.
In order to give students a feeling for the period of history they are about to enter, you may also wish to show them some photographic images. In addition to images included on The Oregon Trail website, a series of photographs from a re-enactment of the Trail experience are available through the EDSITEment-reviewed website The Digital Classroom. To access these images, go to the Archival Research Catalog. Now click on "Search for Archival Holdings." Next, click on "Digital Copies Search." In the blank space next to the instruction "Enter Keywords," type in the words "Oregon Trail." Scroll down the boxed list titled "Media" and select "Photographs and Graphic Materials." Finally, click on "Display Results" to view the re-enactment photos.
If you have limited computer access in your classroom, you may want to print out some photographs to distribute to students. To make a copy, click on the desired photograph and hold your cursor down until a list of options appears. After selecting "Copy this image," you may post the image into a word processing document and print it out as you would any other document.
As students view each image, ask them what they notice about details such as people, clothing, transportation and setting. What does each photograph reveal about the experiences of the pioneers who traveled west on the Oregon Trail?
Using the students' questions (see "Preparation Instructions") as a starting point, describe the experiences of the 19th-century emigrants who traveled on the Oregon Trail. You can research this information ahead of time using the Oregon Trail website. Click on Jumping Off to access useful and entertaining information about the following topics:
"All About the Oregon Trail" also offers detailed information on the following topics:
Finally, "Fantastic Facts about the Oregon Trail" contains a wealth of odd tidbits that are bound to appeal to young imaginations. Each of these sections also includes photographs that can be shared with the class.
For a narrative account, you may wish to read Westward Ho with Ollie Ox!, by Melanie Richardson Dundy (South Beach, OR: MDCT Publishing, 1999), a picture book written for 4-8 year olds.
For first-hand accounts of the experiences of some of the pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail, visit the Trail Archive section of the Oregon Trail website. Here you can access a selection of diaries, letters and memoirs. Excerpts from Harriet Scott Palmer's memoir, Catherine Sager Pringle's diary, or the journals of Narcissa Whitman are likely to be particularly fascinating to young children. As you read the excerpts together, you may ask students to note the similarities and differences in these first-hand accounts.
After students have learned about pioneers' real-life experiences of traveling on the Oregon Trail, have them compare these experiences to those they imagined in the travel story they created as a class (see "Preparing to Teach"). In what ways were their experiences similar? In what ways were they different? Would students have wanted to travel as pioneers on the Oregon Trail? Why or why not?
Have older students write a story about the experiences of a 19th century family traveling on the Oregon Trail. Teachers of younger students (K-1) may wish to have the class create one story together, with each student contributing one sentence (as in Step 1). Each student may write his or her sentence on a sheet of paper and illustrate it; these pages may then be put together to form a complete picture book. Teachers of older students (grade 2) may wish to have each student write and illustrate his or her own story.
Based on pictures and descriptions available through The Oregon Trail website, have students work in groups to create dioramas depicting events that could have happened along the Oregon Trail. Students may wish to use their own Oregon Trail stories for inspiration.
2 class periods