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7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 4 of 11

Trade Networks

Silk Road, barter and coins

What your child practices

Specialization, barter and the first coins, the Silk Road and sea routes (with a reading passage and goods table), and how trade led to both cooperation and conflict.

Alaska content standards learning standard: SS.7.2.19.1; SS.7.4.23.2 · how trade spread people and ideas, and the results of cultural diffusion

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Barter is trading goods for goods, with no money. Coins made trade easier.
  2. The Silk Road was many routes, carrying silk, spices, ideas and inventions.
  3. When you read a goods table, find the item, then read across to the region that sells it.

Example: A merchant wants silk. Which region should they trade with? Silk came from China. China kept how it made silk a secret for centuries. Answer: China

Trade Networks in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 4 of 11 in 7th grade Social Studies, after World Beliefs and before Mesopotamia & Egypt.

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

    What is barter?

    • Giving goods away for free
    • Trading goods directly for other goods, without money
    • Borrowing money from a bank
    • Paying with gold coins

  2. Question 2

    A region has rich farmland but no metal. What does specialization and trade let it do?

    • Avoid all contact with neighbors
    • Grow extra food and trade it for metal tools
    • Stop growing food completely
    • Make metal from wheat

  3. Question 3

    Which statement best describes the Silk Road, according to the passage?

    The Silk Road

    The Silk Road was not one road. It was a network of land and sea routes linking China with Central Asia, India, Persia, Arabia and the Mediterranean world. It grew busy after China's Han dynasty sent envoys west in the 100s BCE.

    Few merchants traveled the whole way. Instead, goods passed from trader to trader and city to city, and each trader added to the price. Camel caravans crossed deserts and stopped to rest and get water at oasis towns such as Samarkand and Dunhuang.

    The routes carried more than silk, spices and horses. Ideas traveled too: Buddhism spread from India into China, and art styles and inventions moved in both directions. Unfortunately, diseases also spread along the same routes.

    • A network of many land and sea routes
    • One paved road from Rome to China
    • A single river used by silk boats
    • A wall built to keep traders out

  4. Question 4

    Seasonal monsoon winds helped sailors trade across the Indian Ocean, linking India with…

    • Central Asia's deserts
    • the Maya and Mexico
    • Arabia, East Africa and Egypt
    • Iceland and Greenland

  5. Question 5

    Did trade lead to cooperation or conflict? Sort each example.

    Sort into: 🤝 cooperation · 🛡️ conflict

    • 💰disputes over high tolls and taxes on goods
    • 🏪merchants from many lands sharing a market
    • 🗺️rival cities going to war over a trade route
    • 🚢Rome and Carthage competing for Mediterranean trade
    • 🌱learning new crops and inventions from neighbors
    • 🪙using shared coins and weights
    • ⚓a kingdom blocking rivals from its ports
    • 📜kingdoms agreeing on trade rules

  6. Question 6

    The Phoenicians were famous for…

    ⛵
    • inventing paper
    • the Code of Hammurabi
    • building the pyramids
    • sea trade across the Mediterranean and a costly purple dye

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