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5th grade · Social Studies · Unit 2 of 6

Colonial Trade & Work

Resources, trade and choices

What your child practices

Resources, specialization and trade in the colonies, mercantilism, and the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African peoples, told plainly and age-appropriately.

Alaska content standards learning standard: SS.5.5.11.1; SS.5.2.11.1 · how colonial producers, workers and trade met people's needs

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. A need is something you must have to live; trade is exchanging goods or services.
  2. Saving money helps with a future need.
  3. Colonists smuggled to avoid English trade rules. Enslaved people resisted because they were forced to work.

Example: Why was smuggling common in the colonies? England made strict trade rules and taxes. Smuggling let colonists avoid them. Answer: to avoid English trade rules and taxes

Colonial Trade & Work in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 2 of 6 in 5th grade Social Studies, after The Thirteen Colonies and before Road to Revolution.

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: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

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

    Free land offered to settlers was an incentive to…

    • Move to a colony
    • Stop farming
    • Join Spain
    • Leave the colony

  2. Question 2

    Why did enslaved people resist slavery, for example by escaping or slowing work?

    • They wanted to go to England
    • They wanted freedom and were forced to work against their will
    • They were bored
    • They were paid too little

  3. Question 3

    What is an opportunity cost?

    • A free gift
    • The next best thing you give up when you make a choice
    • The price of a ticket
    • A tax on tea

  4. Question 4

    What is trade?

    • Keeping everything for yourself
    • Building a fort
    • Paying a fine
    • Exchanging goods or services

  5. Question 5

    Which raw material from New England forests was valuable for ships?

    • Tall trees for masts
    • Cotton
    • Gold
    • Oil

  6. Question 6

    A blacksmith's skill at making tools is an example of…

    • A natural resource
    • A colony
    • Human capital
    • A tax

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