The Spice Trail
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The Spice Trail Teacher resource Year 4 Education @ Adelaide Botanic Garden 1 Taste and Variety It is hard to imagine how boring, tasteless and dangerous food was before the year 1500. The age of exploration changed all that and was considered so important that the year Christopher Columbus went to the Americas is considered by many people to be the beginning of the Modern Age. Newly discovered foods helped people have tastier, safer food and increased variety. One of the claims made about Botanic Gardens is that you can travel the world in any one of them. So follow the Botanical Treasure map on a voyage around the world, through the tropics and the deserts to find the spices we use in our modern lifestyle. Inquire about the life on a ship in 1490. Why was rum added to the drinking water and why was citrus eaten? Discover where the flavours of vanilla and chocolate come from. There is no question as to why they were so valuable! But most of all dispel the myth that the motivation of all early European explorers was swashbuckling adventure and a quest for cities of gold. The more common cause was to break the overland trade route blockade controlling and restricting the flow of spices initially by the Arabs and later the Venetians into Europe. For the first people to open the sea routes the prize was much greater than gold and jewels – it was spices! At one point 1Kg of spice was worth more than 1kg of gold. But think…we can’t make new gold. We can grow new spices and make as many as we want in the end. 2 Bookings All visits to the Botanic Gardens should be booked as part of risk management. Self-Managed Excursions Booking online: http://www.botanic.sa.edu.au/index.php/book-online Booking by email: [email protected] booking form here Booking by phone: 08 8222 9311 Education Manager discussions and bookings ph: 08 8222 9344 or email: [email protected] Guidelines when in the Garden Students must be supervised at all times while in the Garden. Before starting your walk please remind your group that: • Gardens are peaceful places for people to relax and enjoy. • Walking slowly and talking quietly ensures everybody will enjoy the gardens. • Plants are fragile, touch them gently. • Flowers, leaves, bark, seeds etc. growing on plants or lying on the ground are there for all to enjoy. When you have finished with plant material found on the ground always return it to the garden. • Keeping to paths and not walking on beds or borders avoids damage to plants. Risk Management • Water: The garden has a number of open water bodies and requires close supervision by teachers and supervising adults. • Student ratio: Adult to student ratio is recommended at 1:10, for early years and junior primary this should be lower. • Weather: Excursions at the Adelaide Botanic Garden are outdoors so sun protection is required, insect repellent at certain times of the year is recommended. Light showers are not an issue in the gardens and at time enhances the experience. There are a number of sheltered areas throughout the garden and raincoats are preferred to umbrellas. • Washing: After working in the wetland or handling plant material hands should be thoroughly washed particularly before eating. • Toilets: There are 5 groups of public toilets across the Garden as indicated on the maps. 3 Copyright: ©2015 The State of South Australia, Department for Education and Child Development and the Botanic Gardens of South Australia. This publication is protected by copyright. It may be reproduced by South Australian teachers for use with their students. Contents • Purpose and key idea of the trail • Australian Curriculum Connections • Before the excursion • After the excursion • Map • Acknowledgements • Teacher background information Purpose and key idea of the trail Target year level: year 4 Key ideas: • Why did the great journeys of exploration occur? Consider a variety of reasons. • What inspired exploration by 3 world navigators, explorers and traders and what was the effects of their travels? • What were some of the natural vegetation resources provided by the environment? Students will investigate: • Some spices introduced to Europe by Vasco De Gama’s route to India. • Spices involved in the Voyages of Columbus to the Islands in the Americas • Dampier the game changer. • How to follow a map Students are encouraged to observe, analyse, inquire, record, hypothesize and connect knowledge they already have with new learnings. TfEL: Provide an authentic context in which to engage learners and build their understanding whilst using a range of learning modes. Time: Allow about 1 hour for this session. 4 Australian Curriculum Connections General capabilities • Literacy (listening, reading, discussing issues in the garden and speaking about them.) In particular the pre and post trail activities. • Numeracy (organise and interpret historical events and developments, analyses of data to make meaning of the past, timelines, mapping) • Critical and creative thinking (ask questions, locate and select information, develop interpretations, exploring the past) • Ethical behaviour (principles, values and virtues, acting with moral integrity, acting with regard for others, critically exploring the character traits, actions and motivations of early explorers). There are particularly some issues around colonisation that compare our current view of ethics with that view of several centuries ago. • Intercultural understanding (perspectives, beliefs and values of people, past and present) Cross-curriculum priorities • Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia Learning Area focus Year 4 History Journey of at least one world navigator or trader including contacts with other societies. Why did great journeys of exploration occur? Geography Natural resources and the environment. Mapping and the countries of the world and their location. 5 Before the excursion 1. Discussion - The Spice of Life What will be on your table tonight for the evening meal? In Europe in 1450AD, if you were lucky it might have been a stew of turnips, cabbage, celery, Brussel sprouts with a chicken neck and some pig fat. One of the first spices that made food tastier was pepper, but most people could not afford to use it as food but instead used it as a general medicine for colds. At one stage in Europe a kilo of pepper was more valuable than a kilo of gold! People wanted better. They just couldn’t afford or get different foods, so it is a good point at which to discuss why these spice plants were so valuable. 2. Learning the concept of Supply and demand and price. 3. Ethical issues to discuss - Sailors, buccaneers, privateers and pirates. Navy discipline was very important. Captains had life and death power over the sailors. Some sailors managed to get their own ships and worked privately for a country. They were called Privateers. They could often break the “rules” which regular navies had to follow e.g. England often used Privateers (like Captain Francis Drake) to rob other countries or go where the other countries claimed that part of the seas for themselves. England loved them-other countries hated them. So…if you didn’t like the Privateers you called them robbers (Pirates). Many Pirates and Privateers became very important Explorers. One of these was the first Englishman to see Australia – William Dampier. Sometimes Pirates would fight over treasure (gold and yes…spices). When they went to fight they would use swords strapped to themselves with big belts tied with buckles. These sailors were called Swashbucklers. When they were hungry many of the sailors would use their own private BBQs (called a Buccan) to cook their own food. They were called buccaneers. 4. Spice rack activity - Check out the spice-rack at home and compare the spice to the plant. 5. Fridge activity - Check out the fridge and list the fruits and vegetables inside, then trace where they originated. Vocab introduction: Words Spices People Circumnavigation Banana Pirate Doldrums Cardamom Privateer Tropics Cinnamon Buccaneer Scurvy Vanilla Captain Colonize Turmeric Explorer Monopoly Cocoa Swash buckle Contaminated Sugar Slave Kaffir Lime Sailor 6 After the excursion Activities, research and discussions: • Check out the seeds and plants in the Diggers Shop on the Schomburgk Pavilion. • Research the word curry and find out what is in it. • Find maps of the voyages of De Gama and Columbus, then discuss their voyage strategies. • Dampier is thought by many to be the first world traveller to make the world seem smaller. • Who was Admiral Zheng He and where and when did he travel. • Investigate the overland route of spices to Europe before Vasco De Gamma, use it to highlight the blockade and price issues. There are analogies today with petrol. Encourage students to bring their family back again at a different time of the year. The garden is a living museum. As such when you visit some of the plants may not be in fruits, flower or even above ground. Come back later when you can see them in the season they are best displayed. Acknowledgments Content: Michael Yeo and John Thorpe Design and Layout: Tom Chladek Photographs: Indiana Yeo 7 Map Teacher background information 8 This section provides teachers with background information on each plant or station. Some suggested student responses are included; they are by no means exhaustive. The student section is full of activities that are designed to encourage students to engage with the garden plants more closely whilst they observe record, discuss and use the information collected. Finding the plants: The plants on this trail may be found by referring to the map and by looking for the plant nameplate. There is also a photo match of the plant to help.