Goals:

To facilitate students' understanding of the explorers and their motivations for exploration.

Content Areas:

History - a historical look at explorers.

Sociology/Psychology - motivations for the individual explorers and motivations for the society that sponsored them.

Art - making memory cards.

Materials:

One-ready-to make deck of memory cards. (5 x 7" index cards work perfectly)
 
10 names and corresponding pictures of explorers. (photocopy their pictures or download some off of the net.) - Christopher Columbus, Vasco De Gama, Bartholemeu Dias, Vasco de Balboa, Ferdinand Magellan, etc.

20 specific motivational factors. (2 for each explorer, many will overlap) - spices, gold, glory, westward route to India, etc.




One already made memory board (a chalkboard and tape work wonderfully).

Procedure: (1 hour)

1) Give a brief lecture about the ten explorers you chose and their motivations for exploration.

2) Then assign each student to make a card by coloring, pasting, gluing, and writing - BUT they can only decorate ONE side of the card!

3) Once all of the cards are made, the teacher will collect them, mix them up, and tape them face down on the memory board so they all look alike, but can be flipped upright (so the whole class can see what the card is when turned).

4) Divide the class into teams and explain the rules of the memory game. (Each group gets one turn to flip over one card and then try to find its match. If they guess correctly, they can continue to flip over more cards. If they guess incorrectly, the cards both get turned back over. The team with the most cards wins.)

5) Play the game.

6) Give the whole class a treat of some sort for participating, and let the winning team pass it out to everyone.

Assessment:

This lesson will be assessed by participation only. It is an introductory lesson and is supposed to be a fun learning experience with no pressure on memorization, just familiarizing the students to these explorers and their explorations. Participation is judged by the group's participation, and if every one in the group is actively listening and contributing to the game.

This page was submitted by St. Norbert College Ocean Voyagers Program