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Topic title: What drove the Age of Discovery, and how did it transform the world?

Year group: 7
When taught: April to May

What are we learning?
• What the ‘Age of Discovery’ was;
• Why Europe was interested in an ‘Age of Discovery’;
• Who the great explorers were and what they discovered;
• How the ‘Age of Discovery’ linked to technological advancement;
• How the ‘Age of Discovery’ linked to early European colonisation;
• The consequences of the ‘Columbian Exchange’ (including the ‘Humble Potato’);
• How the ‘Age of Discovery’ impacted England.

Why is this important to know?
• It is important to understand the global interconnectedness of the Early Modern period and to understand the global context of the British history we have been studying already in Year 7.
• This helps to put a familiar historical topic of the ‘Tudors’ into an international context.
• Our focus on the ‘Columbian Exchange’ allows us to consider relationships between human history and the environment in which it happened.

Where does this link into our past and future learning?
• Looking at global interconnectedness of the Early Modern period will build on our topic on the Silk Roads which addressed a similar theme in the Medieval period.
• Studying the early colonisation of the ‘Age of Discovery’ provides an introduction to the theme of ‘empire’ which we will return to in Year 7 topic 6 ‘Who are the British?’ and in the spring term of Year 8, when we focus on the British Empire as a whole topic of study.
• Understanding the global interconnectedness of the Early Modern period will be useful context for our GCSE topic ‘Elizabethan England 1568-1603’.

How will we be assessed on this topic?
• The end of topic assessment will be a ten minute knowledge test (including some multiple choice questions, some non multiple-choice questions, a chronology task and a key word task).
• This topic will also be assessed in the end of Year 7 exam.

What makes a strong piece of work in this topic? What are teachers hoping to see?
• PEEL paragraphs to explain the causes and consequences of aspects of the Age of Discovery;
• Linking learning from each lesson to the big topic question;
• Understanding the concepts of similarity and difference (between different countries involved in the Age of Discovery);
• Use of key words regularly (see below).

What key words are there in this topic?
• Astrolabe: A special instrument that explorers began using to navigate at sea in the 1400s. It was used to measure the positions of the Sun and other objects in the sky. That helped navigators estimate time and their own position on the sea.
• Colonisation: The practice of one country or government taking control of another territory and its people and exploiting their land and resources.
• Columbian Exchange: The process by which plants, animals, diseases, people, and ideas have been introduced from the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) to the New World (the Americas) and vice versa.
• Exploitation: The act of using someone or something unfairly for your own advantage.
• Globalisation: When different parts of the world become more and more connected.
• Trade: The action of buying and selling goods and services.

What can I try if I want to stretch and challenge myself on this topic?
• Study more about the experiences of different countries involved in the Age of Discovery – what comparisons and contrasts can you make between experiences in those different places?
• Do some independent research on different individual explorers involved in the Age of Discovery (such as Christopher Columbus and Franci Drake).

What wider reading can be done on this topic?
Tim Marshall’s book – The future of geography : how power and politics in space will change our world (available in the Aird library)
Miranda Kaufmann’s book – Black Tudors: African Lives in Renaissance England (available in the Aird library)
John Matusiak’s book – A history of the Tudors in 100 objects (available in the Aird library)