Crossing the Empty Quarter Education Pack - Lesson: Famous Explorers
Lesson Summary:
Students will be introduced to a wider range of ‘famous explorers’ and conduct
further research regarding their achievements.
Students will use teamwork to prepare and present a presentation.
Higher-level students will demonstrate an ability to respond to feedback, to improve
their performance.
RESOURCES
Internet and computer lab
Printer
A4 paper
Lesson Plan: Social Studies
Grade
Period
Date
Class
Teaching Topic: Charting the unknown
Learning
To be aware of the achievements of famous explorers and consider objectives
how their example has helped mankind’s progress.
(Maximum
To understand the importance of developing effective habits in order to of three)
build character.
Students are familiar with a range of famous explorers and their Success
achievements. criteria
Students can work in groups to agree on the achievements and (Maximum
admirable qualities of successful explorers. of three)
Thinking
Skills
1. Slide 13: Identify where the picture comes from. Starter
2. Elicit/teach that the desire to push the boundaries Activity
continues into space exploration today. E.g. Pluto
appears beyond our ability now. Once, travelling to
America represented the same level of challenge.
3. Ask: Who discovered America?
Understan
ding –
sharing
ideas
Introducing famous explorers Main
Activitie
1. Use the presentation to introduce famous explorers from s
the past and the key factors that contributed to the ‘Age of
Exploration’.
2. Worksheet 1: Match the explorer to their terrain.
3. Elicit information about these explorers and/or the
significance of their journeys.
Applying –
using
ideas of
static
electricity
in a new
way
Research skills 1: Scanning
1. Prepare a short presentation about ONE explorer’s
achievements. Refer back to the common characteristics of
explorers, identified on the previous lesson.
Groups agree on ONE characteristic for their explorer and
explain how their achievements have demonstrated this as
part of the presentation.
Use the internet to conduct research.
2. Explain the presentation review criteria to the class in
terms of an allocation of marks to four aspects of the
presentation: a. Coverage of the content. b. Strength of the
case made for a particular characteristic. c. Confidence and
clarity of delivery. d. Collaboration – working as a group.
Creating –
putting
forward a
theory
Presentations
1. Each group presents to the class.
2. Class provides feedback against the success criteria.
3. Teacher reviews the activity and provides feedback on
how they performed as a group, and ways in which they
have illustrated some of the same qualities that can be
admired in famous explorers.
1. Use the presentations to review the answers to the
Plenary
question: “Who discovered America?
Ref: http://famous-explorers.org/who-really-discoveredamerica/
2. Return to slide 15. Consider the routes taken by the
‘famous explorers’.
3. Elicit/teach that the ability to travel accurately in straights
lines away from a coastline led to the new age of
exploration, and this had been ‘learnt previously by Ahmad
ibn Majid who passed on this technology to Vasco De Gama.
(See teaching materials.)
www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.navigator.ahmad.ib
n.majid.htm
4. Discuss the reality of ‘discovery’ and records of
Applying –
to new
situations
‘discovery’, against the fact that people were already living in
many of these places. Many achievements have gone
unrecorded, or were simply handed down to us via stories,
legends and fairy tales; the voyages of Sinbad for example.
5. Slides 24 and 25: Elicit/explain that these adventurers
would not have been able to achieve what they had done
without the generous support and knowledge of locals
already there.
Worksheet 1:
Match the following explorers with their correct ‘terrain’:
Bertram Thomas
Mt Everest
Ibn Battuta
Seas of Asia
Neil Armstrong
The Ocean
Edmund Hilary
The Islamic world
Lief Ericson
Rub Al Khali
Zheng He
Greenland
Captain Cook
The Polar regions
Christopher Columbus
The American continents
Jaques Cousteau
The Moon
David Livingstone
The source of the Nile
Roald Amundsen
Australia
Sample Biography Card1: Neil Armstrong
Reference: www.famousexplorers.org
Born: Aug 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.
Died: Aug 25, 2012 (at age 82) in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Nationality: American
Field: Naval aviator, test pilot
Famous For: Landing on the Moon
Awards: Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Space
Medal of Honor
Ahmad ibn Majid
Reference source:
https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.navigator.ahmad.ib
n.majid.htm
He it is who appointed the stars to you, that you might guide yourselves by
them through the darkness of land and sea.
–The Qur’an, Sura VI, verse 97.
Image: N Mcdonald
Ahmad ibn Majid was born in Oman, probably in 1432, the year Zheng
He’s junks docked at Jiddah. The last of his approximately 40 known
compositions, a poem on the heavens, is dated 1500, the same year Pedro
Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil on his way to India by way of the Cape
of Good Hope—thus linking Europe, the New World, Africa and Asia in
a single voyage. Ibn Majid must have died soon after that date, his life
spanning the most critical century in the history of the ocean whose
currents, winds, reefs, shoals, headlands, harbors, seamarks and stars he
spent a lifetime studying.
His most important work was Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul ‘Ilm al-Bahr wa
’l-Qawa’id (Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of
Navigation), written in 1490. It is an encyclopedia of navigational lore:
the history and basic principles of navigation, lunar mansions, rhumb
lines, the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of
ports from East Africa to Indonesia, star positions, accounts of the
monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for
professional navigators. He drew from his own experience and that of his
father, also a famous navigator, and the lore of generations of Indian
Ocean sailors.
The Book of Useful Information deals not only with the monsoon system,
but also with the finer details of local wind regimes. The prevailing winds
in the Red Sea north of Jiddah were among the most difficult, Ibn Majid
writes, because they blew from the north all year round. Normal practice
was to sail to Jiddah and there either transfer cargo to smaller boats,
whose pilots were experienced in the local conditions between Jiddah and
Suez, or to send car- goes overland. Even to Jiddah, and to ‘Aydhab on
the Egyptian side, access was only possible during the northeast
monsoon, between October and mid-March. Other specialized knowledge
was needed to sail elsewhere: south of the equator, for example, where
the monsoons gave way to the trade winds. The China Sea too had its
own wind regime. Only a lifetime of sailing could teach a mu‘allim, or
master navigator, the skills upon which the entire trading network
depended.