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5th grade · Social Studies · Unit 6 of 12

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.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 5.3c; 5.3d · the Columbian Exchange of goods, people, ideas and diseases, and the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. The Columbian Exchange began after Columbus's voyages in 1492.
  2. To the Americas: horses, wheat, and diseases like smallpox and measles. To Europe: corn, potatoes, tomatoes.
  3. Sugar plantations forced enslaved Africans to work, carried across the Middle Passage.

Example: Which animal came to the Americas from Europe? Native peoples had no horses before contact. The Spanish brought them. Answer: horses

The Columbian Exchange in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 6 of 12 in 5th grade Social Studies, after Explorers & Encounters and before Geography of the Americas.

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: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

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

    Sugarcane was grown in the Caribbean and Brazil on…

    • Small window boxes
    • Large plantations
    • Icy fields
    • Ships at sea

  2. Question 2

    The triangular trade linked…

    • Asia, Australia and Antarctica
    • Canada, Mexico and Peru
    • Only Spain and Portugal
    • Europe, Africa and the Americas

  3. Question 3

    The Columbian Exchange was…

    • A ship Columbus sailed
    • A trade only between Europe and Asia
    • The movement of plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases between the hemispheres
    • A bank in Spain

  4. Question 4

    Africans in the Americas brought skills and traditions such as…

    • Ice hockey
    • The Latin alphabet
    • Music, foods and farming knowledge
    • Glaciers

  5. Question 5

    About how many Africans were forced across the Atlantic?

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

  6. Question 6

    Coffee and bananas were brought to the Americas and…

    • Never grew there
    • Were sent back to Europe at once
    • Were used only as decoration
    • Became major plantation crops

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