Exploring Our Past: From Local Roots to Ancient Worlds · 3rd Class

Active learning ideas

Tom Crean: An Irish Antarctic Hero

Active learning works for this topic because students need to connect global history to their own lives through food and exploration. By investigating the foods they eat every day, students see how exploration shaped Ireland in tangible ways. Collaboration and debate help them move beyond facts to understand the human impact of these changes.

• NCCA Curriculum Specifications
• NCCA: Primary - Story
• NCCA: Primary - Working as a Historian

• 20–45 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 3 activities

Activity 01

• Inquiry Circle
• 40 min · Small Groups

Inquiry Circle: The Global Dinner Plate

Students are given a list of foods (potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, wheat, cows). In groups, they must sort them into 'Old World' and 'New World' categories, then discuss how a typical Irish dinner would have looked before the Age of Exploration.

Analyze the personal qualities that enabled Tom Crean to survive extreme Antarctic conditions.

Facilitation Tip

For the Think-Pair-Share, have students write Crean’s name on a sticky note with one word describing his most important quality before discussing in pairs.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'Imagine you are on an expedition with Tom Crean. What one piece of advice would you give him before facing a blizzard, and why?' Encourage students to connect their advice to Crean's known qualities like resilience or leadership.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Management
• Self-Awareness

Activity 02

• Formal Debate
• 45 min · Whole Class

Formal Debate: Was Exploration Good or Bad?

Divide the class into two groups. One group lists the benefits (new foods, better maps, shared knowledge) and the other lists the harms (diseases, loss of land, slavery). Students must present their points and try to reach a 'balanced' conclusion.

Evaluate the reliability of primary sources, such as expedition diaries, in understanding Crean's journeys.

What to look for

Provide students with a short, simplified excerpt from an expedition diary (real or fictionalized). Ask them to identify one detail that tells them about the conditions and one detail that reveals Crean's character. Discuss their findings as a class.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Management
• Decision-Making

Activity 03

• Think-Pair-Share
• 20 min · Pairs

Think-Pair-Share: The Name Game

Explain that many places were renamed by explorers. Students think about how they would feel if someone came to their house and gave it a new name, discuss with a partner, and share their thoughts on why names are important to people's identity.

Justify Tom Crean's recognition as a national hero in Ireland.

What to look for

Ask students to write down two personal qualities that made Tom Crean a successful explorer and one reason why he is remembered as a hero in Ireland. Collect these to gauge understanding of the key attributes discussed.

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

A few notes on teaching this unit

Teachers should frame exploration as a human story, not just a sequence of events, by focusing on personal accounts like Tom Crean’s. Avoid framing exploration as only positive or negative—use structured debates to help students weigh both sides. Research shows that students retain historical empathy when they connect past events to modern issues, so link the Columbian Exchange to today’s global food systems.

Successful learning looks like students recognizing how exploration reshaped diets and societies, not just memorizing dates or names. They should confidently explain the Columbian Exchange using examples from their own plates and debate its consequences with evidence. Students should also articulate why Tom Crean’s leadership and resilience mattered in extreme conditions.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During the Collaborative Investigation: The Global Dinner Plate activity, watch for students who assume potatoes have always been in Ireland.

  Use the food origin map to show how potatoes traveled from South America to Ireland. Ask students to place a potato on the map and trace its route, then discuss how this changed Irish farming and population.

• During the Structured Debate: Was Exploration Good or Bad? activity, watch for students who say exploration was only about discovery.

  Use the debate roles to push students to consider economic and political motives. Ask them to find evidence in their research to support arguments about power, not just curiosity.

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Methods used in this brief

• Inquiry Circle
• Formal Debate
• Think-Pair-Share