On the Road with Marco Polo: Homecoming
This lesson can serve as the culminating review lesson for the entire EDSITEment
Marco Polo Curriculum
Unit, or you may use it to complete your own series of lessons for 3rd through
5th graders that focus on Marco Polo's journey to China and back.
Guiding Questions:
What happened to Marco Polo when he returned to Venice?
What circumstances led to the publication of The Travels of Marco Polo?
What effect did Marco Polo's book have on future explorers?
You might want to review with your students the highlights of Marco Polo's
famous journey. You can visit an online slideshow of his travels by accessing
sights
and sounds available through Xpeditions. (note: this takes about 8 minutes to load and 9 minutes to run.)
Tell students that after Marco Polo returned to Italy, he found himself involved
in a war fought between Venice and Genoa.
For more details about the long history of war between Venice and Genoa, visit
The Four Genoa Wars,
a website available via the EDSITEment approved resource Labyrinth.
Marco Polo ended up in prison, and while there he described his many adventures
abroad to a fellow-prisoner, novelist Rusticello. His vivid descriptions resulted
in a book, commonly known as The Travels of Marco Polo, which became
a bestseller and had a great impact upon the development and expansion of trade
between Europe and the Far East. There were plenty of people who thought that
Marco Polo's book was complete fantasy and devoid of fact. Marco Polo, however,
swore on his deathbed that he did not even tell half of what he saw.
A century later, even Christopher Columbus was possibly inspired by Marco's
book. His copy (with his notes written in the margin) can be seen today in a
museum in Spain. You can read the details about Columbus' version (as well as
questions regarding whether he read it before or after his first journey to
the new world) by visiting Marco
Polo's Voyage Home available through Xpeditions. Scroll down to the Did You Know? section for more detail.
Student Activity:
Tell students that you are Rusticello and that they are the voice of Marco Polo.
You are sharing a jail cell and are very, very bored. Tell them to pretend that
they are telling you the story of their travels in order to relieve the boredom
of imprisonment. Call upon students to:
- Trace Marco Polo's route to China and back on a large classroom map of the
world (instead of a large classroom map, you can project the EDSITEment interactive
Marco Polo's Journey as detailed below)
- Describe the various types of terrain that "they" (as Marco Polo) traveled
through
- List the foods they ate, the people and cultures they saw, the religions
they encountered in each of the major regions "they" (as Marco Polo) visited
If you have internet access for this class session, you can use EDSITEment's
interactive Marco Polo's Journey to guide this discussion,
supplementing each regional question with more of your own to be answered out
loud by students. Or, you can have each student visit Marco Polo's Journey individually
after completing the group activity as detailed above. Students can each test
their knowledge of Marco Polo's journey by answering the questions. At the end,
they will be confirmed as great explorers of Marco Polo's world!
Assessment:
Have students write an “entry” of Marco Polo's journey. They should
pick one specific aspect of his journey to write about—examples could include
details about the crossing of the Pamirs, the great help camels provided in
crossing the deserts, or even the glory of Kublai Khan's palace. They should
use the resources explored during the curriculum unit, as well as library and
other reliable internet resources, to write their book “entry.”
Essentially, the students are writing a report on a specific topic under the
conceit of helping Marco finish his book. If possible, you could help them read
the relevant section of Marco Polo's journey.
If your students completed all of the lessons in this curriculum unit, have
them combine all of their assessments and written activities into an On the
Road with Marco Polo portfolio to turn in for final evaluation. If they
want, they can include their notes with this booklet as well so that they have
a complete journal of their "journey" (although you will want to be clear about
which parts are for assessment).
Extending the Lesson
An interesting topic for student research would be to explore how trade between
Europe and eastern Asia developed in the years following Marco Polo's famous
trip. A good starting point can be found at Marco
Polo's Voyage Home available through Xpeditions. Scroll down to Did You Know? To read translated
selections from Marco Polo's book, access the following links available through
Labyrinth:
Selected EDSITEment Websites
Labyrinth:
Xpeditions
- sights
and sounds
[http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/07/01/
sights_n_sounds/media.2.1.html]
- Marco
Polo's Voyage Home
[http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/
2001/07/01/html/fr_20010701.2.html]
Standards Alignment
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