Kōkiri Learn

Week 2 of 5

Merchants, monks and travellers: what moved along the routes?

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Session 1 · TRACE: Relationships

The relay trade game

  1. 10 minQuestion: did one merchant carry a bolt of silk all the way from China to Rome? Predict.
  2. 25 minPlay the relay trade game: each table is a trading city. Silk and pepper move from table to table, and each trader adds a price and a tax. Track the price and what else travels (a story, a disease card, a new word).
  3. 10 minDebrief: how much did the silk cost by the end? Who made money? What travelled that nobody paid for?
  4. 5 minKārearea asks one question: 'Which relationship on the route mattered most, and why?'

Session 2 · TRACE: Relationships

Ideas that changed the world

  1. 10 minFour stations: paper, printing, the compass and gunpowder. At each, read an object card: where it started, when, and how it spread.
  2. 25 minHands-on: make recycled paper, magnetise a needle to make a floating compass, or carve a foam printing block and print. Rotate if there is time.
  3. 10 minMonks and beliefs: learn how Buddhist monks such as Xuanzang walked from China to India and back (629–645 CE), carrying ideas and books. How did beliefs travel alongside goods?
  4. 5 minRank the four inventions by how much they changed life far from China. Be ready to justify.

Getting started

Use a price-tracking table for the relay game and one object card per station.

Stretch

Find out how the Black Death travelled along trade routes in the 1340s. What does that tell you about the downside of connection?

Checkpoint

Each student can explain relay trade and name one invention, where it came from and how it spread.

Activities for this week

Useful this week