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9th grade · Social Studies · Unit 16 of 16

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.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 9.10; 9.10a; 9.10b; 9.10c; 9.10d; 9.10e · European exploration, the Columbian Exchange, colonization, the Atlantic slave trade, and the shift in global trade networks

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Explorers used caravels, small fast ships that could sail against the wind. Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492.
  2. The Columbian Exchange moved plants, animals and diseases, devastating Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  3. About 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships; the Middle Passage was the forced voyage across the Atlantic, mostly to sugar plantations.

Example: What was the Middle Passage? It was the middle leg of the Atlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans were forced across the ocean. Answer: the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic

Encounter & the Atlantic World in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 16 of 16 in 9th grade Social Studies, after 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: 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

    In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing…

    • around the southern tip of Africa
    • through the Sahara
    • up the Nile
    • across the Pacific

  2. Question 2

    Historians often sum up the motives for European exploration as…

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

  3. Question 3

    Which tool helped sailors find their latitude at sea?

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

  4. Question 4

    About how many Africans were forced onto ships in the Atlantic slave trade?

    • about 1,000
    • about 50,000
    • about 200,000
    • about 12.5 million

  5. Question 5

    The Middle Passage was…

    • a road through the Alps
    • a route across the Sahara
    • the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic
    • a canal in China

  6. Question 6

    The encomienda system in Spanish America gave colonists…

    • a seat in the Ottoman court
    • free land in Spain
    • the right to force Indigenous people to work for them
    • the right to vote

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