A map of Marco Polo's route to and from China.
	Subject Areas Art and Culture    Anthropology History and Social Studies    World History - Asia/Far East    World History - Europe   Time Required   Lesson 1: 60 minutes Lesson 2: 60 minutes Lesson 3: 60 minutes Lesson 4: 60 minutes Lesson 5: 60 minutes Lesson 6: 60 minutes Lesson 7: 60 minutes Lesson 8: 60 minutes   Skills   Map skills Observation and description Collaboration Brainstorming Visual art   Additional Data   Date Created: 07/31/03

On the Road with Marco Polo: Homecoming

Lesson Eight of Curriculum Unit:
On the Road with Marco Polo

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:

• 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?

• Marco Polo: The Glories of Kinsay
• On the Tartars

Previous lesson

Return to Curriculum Unit: On the Road with Marco Polo

• Marco Polo: The Glories of Kinsay
  [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/polo-kinsay.html]
• On the Tartars
  [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/mpolo44-46.html]

• 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]

Other Information

Standards Alignment

1. NAES-VisArts(K-4) 4
   
   Understanding the visual arts in relation to history and cultures
   
   
2. NCSS-1
   
   Culture and cultural diversity. more
   
   
3. NCSS-2
   
   Time, continuity, and change. The ways human beings view themselves in and over time. more
   
   
4. NCSS-3
   
   People, places, and environments. more
   
   
5. NCTE/IRA-7
   
   Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. more
   
   
6. NGS-1
   
   How to Use Maps and Other Geographic Representations, Tools, and Technologies to Acquire, Process, and Report Information from a Spatial Perspective
   
   
7. NGS-12
   
   The Processes, Patterns, and Functions of Human Settlement
   
   
8. NGS-17
   
   How to Apply Geography to Interpret the Past
   
   
9. NGS-2
   
   How to Use Mental Maps to Organize Information About People, Places, and Environments in a Spatial Context
   
   
10. NGS-3
    
    How to Analyze the Spatial Organization of People, Places, and Environments on Earth’s Surface
    
    
11. NGS-9
    
    The Characteristics, Distribution, and Migration of Human Population on Earth’s Surface