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4th grade · Social Studies · Unit 4 of 9

The Columbian Exchange

Crops, animals, diseases and the Middle Passage

What your child practices

The plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases that crossed the Atlantic after 1492, sugar plantations, and the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, told factually, with how enslaved Africans resisted and kept their cultures alive.

Arizona Academic Standards learning standard: 4.G3.1; 4.G4.1 · the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the people of the Americas, Europe and Africa

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. After 1492, plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases crossed the Atlantic: the Columbian Exchange.
  2. Corn and potatoes went to Europe. Horses, cattle and wheat came to the Americas.
  3. Diseases killed millions, and more than 12 million Africans were forced across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage.

Example: Which went from the Americas to Europe: potatoes or horses? Horses came from Europe. Potatoes first grew in South America. Answer: potatoes

The Columbian Exchange in Arizona

In the Arizona Academic Standards, this is unit 4 of 9 in 4th grade Social Studies, after Maya, Aztec & Inca and before Exploration & Exchange.

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: Arizona Department of Education

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

    Which crop came to the Americas from Africa and Asia?

    • Peanuts
    • Potatoes
    • Rice
    • Squash

  2. Question 2

    Conditions on Middle Passage ships were…

    • Like a vacation cruise
    • Free and open
    • Crowded, cruel and often deadly
    • Comfortable and safe

  3. Question 3

    About how many Africans were forced across the Atlantic?

    • About 1,000
    • More than 12 million
    • About 500
    • About 50,000

  4. Question 4

    A cash crop is…

    • A crop that grows coins
    • A crop grown to sell, not to eat at home
    • Any wild plant
    • A crop grown only for animals

  5. Question 5

    Which animal changed life for many peoples of the Great Plains?

    • The horse
    • The elephant
    • The llama
    • The camel

  6. Question 6

    Why did the slave trade grow when sugar plantations grew?

    • Ships had nothing else to carry
    • Plantation owners demanded more forced labor
    • Africans asked to move
    • Sugar needed no workers

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