Major Concepts:

1. Many geographic, economic, technological, personal, and political factors having their roots in the decades and centuries before the 1490s induced Europeans to launch voyages of explorations and discovery.

2. The goals, purposes, and methods of the exploring European countries varied, reflecting the range of societies, cultures, and political systems that these countries possessed.

Objectives: The student will be able to:

1. Use facts pertaining to reasons why Europeans launched voyages of exploration and discovery as the basis for developing a hypothesis as to what factors in the countries' past induced them to launch voyages of exploration and discovery.

2. Develop a procedure for testing the above hypotheses and follow them to a conclusion.

3. Develop sets of hypotheses as to the goal, purpose, and method of the exploration of the Americas, based on the factors within European societies that induced them to launch voyages of exploration and discovery.

4. Develop procedures for testing the hypotheses in Objective Three and follow them to conclusion.

Suggested lesson /activities:

1. Begin this unit by telling this brief anecdote about the first lunar launch:

   In 1969, when reporters were interviewing Christopher Craft, the then chief of NASA's manned space exploration program, before the launching of Apollo XI, our first manned lunar expedition, one reporter asked: "Aren't you afraid that you will find something unexpected that could cause a mission failure?" His response went something like this: "No, we are quite confident of what is there. What does worry me is that we have not asked the right questions about the data."

2. Discuss with students how this anecdote relates to historians' approaches to the period of European explorations and discovery in the Americas. In particular, lead the discussion in ways that will show that different questions asked and the hypotheses generated around those questions lead to quite different interpretation of events. (You may want to summarize by alluding to CROSSROADS Essay II, p. 1, in which the 1792 and 1892 commemorations of Columbus's expeditions differed markedly from that of 1992, due to the growth of historical knowledge and the revision of historians' interpretations of the past.)

3. Using students' known information about the moon and space flight, generate a class list of questions NASA may have asked. Place them on the chalkboard as elicited.

4. When the list of questions raised by the students reaches five to ten questions, select one and ask class what hypothesis might be generated from that question.

5. Select one of the hypotheses and ask the class to devise a procedure that might have been used to test the hypothesis.

   (These first five activities constitute a refresher set of procedures that focuses the following set of activities.)

6. Distribute a map of the American territories claimed by the various European nations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (If such a map is available in the course text, this will suffice for this activity.) Have each student select three claimed territories which they would like to learn more about. Form groups of three to five students, making sure that there is a group of interested students for each claimed territory.

7. Give all students the statement of the lesson's objectives. Direct each group to the resources (any good summary of facts will suffice) identified in the bibliographical essay for CROSSROADS Unit II. Each group, facilitated by the instructor, should generate a series of questions to ask about Objective One and so proceed through all the parts of the Objective in a manner similar to that used in the set procedure activity.

8. When the group has completed all the objectives, ask the group to frame five questions that, they believe, all students should be able to answer if they understand the basic concept/content which the group has disclosed. These questions can become a part of a concept/content pool for later testing of cognitive understanding.