Goals:

1. Gain an understanding about the imports and exports of the continents involved in the triangular trade.
2. Use effective research methods to find historical information.
3. Work effectively with other students and learn from each other in that process.
4. Apply knowledge about the Atlantic slave trade and judge the trade as a critical thinker.

Resources:

1. Africa in History by Basil Davidson (1991). New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. (ISBN 0-02-042791-3)
2. Internet access

   
   http://asu.alasu.edu/academic/advstudies/3b.html
   http://middlepassages.com/slave/chron.htm
   

3. Library access
4. The Atlantic Slave Trade by David Northrup (1994). Lexington: D.C. Heath and Co. (ISBN 0-669-33145-7).

Time:

Two to three hours will be required to complete the lesson, depending on the access to resources that is available. Steps one through three (.5 to 1 hour), steps four and five (45 minutes to 1 hour), and steps six and seven (45 minutes to 1 hour).

Procedure:

1. Introduce the three continents involved in the triangular trade during the 1600-1830 slave trade. (Europe, Africa, and America)
2. Divide students into six groups.
3. Assign each team to a continent; Europe, Africa, or America. Each team will have to find three things that were exported and three things that were imported for their assigned continent. Allow each team to access the library and Internet to find three imports and three exports.
4. Teams report findings back to the class and a class list of imports and exports is compiled.
5. Discuss the findings and assign of critical thinking question. (see sheet)

Assessment:

1. Each team must orally present findings to the class (criteria for success- finding three imports and three exports from their continent and documenting their sources).
2. Each student must submit an evaluation of each member of his or her group (criteria for success- see group assessment rubric).
3. Each student must hand in a paragraph about the effectiveness of their continent’s trade based on their findings and class discussion (criteria for success- see writing rubrics).

Curricular Strands and Major Concepts:

1. Language Arts- writing paragraphs on research findings and reading a variety of literature to find information.
2. Social Studies- finding historical information and analyzing the information.

Possible Extensions:

1. Set up ports in the classroom and have students participate in role-playing.
2. Discuss the methods used to trade across oceans. (navigation of ships)

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