Subscribe

8th grade · Social Studies · Unit 10 of 13

Encounter & the Atlantic World

Exploration, exchange and the Atlantic slave trade

What your child practices

Why and how Europeans explored, the Columbian Exchange, the devastating effect on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade and its effects on Africa, and how new ocean routes changed older trade networks.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 8.12; 8.13 · the Columbian Exchange, Spanish colonies and the transatlantic slave trade

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Sailors used tools like the astrolabe to find their latitude at sea.
  2. The Columbian Exchange’s deadliest result for Indigenous peoples of the Americas was disease, such as smallpox, which killed millions.
  3. Most enslaved Africans were forced to work on sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Example: Which tool helped sailors find their latitude? Latitude tells how far north or south you are. Sailors measured the angle of the Sun or stars. They used an astrolabe. Answer: the astrolabe

Encounter & the Atlantic World in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 10 of 13 in 8th grade Social Studies, after Exploration & Exchange and before Absolutism to Enlightenment.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Historians often sum up the motives for European exploration as…

    • snow, ice and fishing
    • gold, God and glory
    • peace, rest and farming
    • art, music and dance

  2. Question 2

    In 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, reached…

    • China
    • Australia
    • islands in the Caribbean
    • India

  3. Question 3

    The deadliest result of the Columbian Exchange for Indigenous peoples of the Americas was…

    • new music
    • new crops
    • diseases such as smallpox, which killed millions
    • new languages

  4. Question 4

    The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided newly claimed lands outside Europe between…

    • Spain and Portugal
    • the Ottomans and the Ming
    • England and France
    • Venice and Genoa

  5. Question 5

    Which tool helped sailors find their latitude at sea?

    • the plow
    • the astrolabe
    • the abacus
    • the printing press

  6. Question 6

    The triangular trade linked…

    • China, India and Japan
    • Rome, Greece and Egypt
    • Europe, West Africa and the Americas
    • Russia, Persia and Arabia

More 8th grade