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Lewis and Clark
(1804-1806)

Lewis and Clark Make New Discoveries

Lewis and Clark Make New Discoveries
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 3 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.4

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    underground, grizzly, journey, traveled, shoot, barge, barking, famous, when, itself, kill, bears, important, scary, anymore, large
     content words:    Native Americans, President Thomas Jefferson, President Jefferson, Three Forks, Pacific Coast, Pacific Ocean, United States

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Lewis and Clark Make New Discoveries
By Cathy Pearl 		  
1     When Lewis and Clark went on their famous journey, they found many new things. They saw a lot of plants and animals that no one had ever seen before. The journals talk about 178 plants and 122 animals that scientists did not know about.
 
2     One of the animals that Lewis and Clark saw for the first time was the grizzly bear. They were very curious about the animal. The Native Americans talked about this scary animal that the explorers would not want to meet. They even showed Lewis and Clark large claws that had come from a bear they had killed. Lewis and Clark were excited. They wanted to see this large animal. They weren't afraid of it. They finally saw their first grizzly bear in Montana. They were able to shoot and kill it. They thought the Native Americans were scared of it because all they had to shoot it with were bows and arrows.
 
3     Lewis and Clark soon learned their lesson. The next time they saw a grizzly bear they shot it eight or nine times. The bear wouldn't die. Then they met another bear that chased some of the men into a tree. Soon they saw a lot of grizzly bears that they couldn't kill. They weren't curious about the animal anymore. They were afraid of it then and hoped that they didn't see another.
 
4     The explorers first saw the black tailed prairie dog in 1804 in Nebraska. Their journals say it was a small animal that burrowed into the ground. They said it looked like a small squirrel. The explorers even called it a barking squirrel. They decided to catch one to send back to President Thomas Jefferson. It wasn't as easy as they thought it would be. First, they tried to dig down into the animal's hole. The journal says they dug six feet before they gave up. Then they tried to dump water down the holes. This is how they finally caught one.

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