Joanne Case
Fall 2011
Educ 327
Africa’s Trading Empire
Grade 5
(1 day: 50 minutes)
Academic Standard: Social Studies 5.4.6 Use economic reasoning to explain how specialization results in more
interdependence.
Performance Objectives: Given a map of Africa, students will write one historical and one modern example of trade in
terms of items having (controlling) and wanting (lacking).
Assessment: Students will mark a have and a want on the map of Africa. They will also write a corresponding original
example of trade from their own experience in terms of have and want.
Advanced Preparation by Teacher: Prepare unsalted crackers and salted crackers, graphic of Sahara desert
(http://www.oliverlehmann.com/photos/Egypt/sahara_desert-27.jpg), gold bar, spear, transparency of Africa map
showing ancient Ghana and Saudi Arabia (the one on textbook page 107 is fine), container of salt water, container of
salt deposits, half sheets with instructions for 5 different groups, computer with internet access and speakers turned on
Procedure:
Note: Pretest was administered prior to this lesson.
Introduction/Motivation:
 Show a graphic of a dry desert.
 Invite students to imagine they live in a dry desert. Discuss so they start to feel the heat and dryness.
 Ask a student to distribute to each student an unsalted saltine cracker. Have students eat the crackers on
my signal. After they react to the bland taste, present three objects: salt, gold bar, and a sword. Ask
―What would make these crackers taste better?‖ (Gardner: Bodily/Kinesthetic) (Bloom: Analysis)
Step-by-Step Plan:
Class discussion (10 minutes)
1. Explain that in the year 700, the kingdom of Ghana (show ancient region on modern map or overhead from
textbook) had food (represented by crackers) and powerful armies to protect itself. And it mined lots of gold.
(Write G – Ghana – Gold on the board.) And if you have gold and armies, what/who else could you
possibly need? Aren’t you completely independent? (Write independent on the board.) Ghana specialized
in gold (Write specialize on board), but what happens when you specialize in something? You depend on
someone else specializing in the thing you don’t specialize in. Ghana needed salt.
2. Why did Ghana need salt so badly? Can’t they stand to eat bland food? Salt is used to preserve foods (think
beef jerky). What’s the weather like in the Sahara Desert? (Bloom: Comprehension) When you sweat, as you
would in a hot dry place, you lose salt, so the people in the kingdom of Ghana needed salt not just for taste,
but for health and survival. (Compare to Gatorade!)
3. Look at textbook page 107. Help students identify the kingdom of Ghana and the trade routes (red lines) and
rivers (Niger River is pronounced NI-jer). Arab traders (North Africa) harvested salt. That was their
specialty. How? What did they have or control? (Bloom: Application) Salt deposits, salty sea water, heat.
Show a cup of saltwater, then show a cup with the water evaporated and only the salt left behind. They
evaporated water, which left salt behind, or they found places where salt had been left behind years earlier –
underground for example. Ghana could not do this; they had heat but not salt water or salt deposits. So,
Ghana has gold but wants salt. Arab traders have salt, but why should they make the trek to
Timbuktu/Ghana? What can Ghana offer them? The Arab traders want gold (see picture of gold lion on page
107). Write want and have on the board. Ghana and the Arab traders became trading partners. They
became interdependent. (Write interdependent on board. Example of inter- prefix: interception) Ghana
became super rich. With their armies, they could control the trade routes and add taxes (tariffs) onto their
prices.
4. Travelers exchanged more than just goods (gold, salt, etc.). What else might they exchange? They
exchanged ideas. People with different ideas went to travel and work in new places. Many of the Arab
traders were of the Muslim religion. They brought Muslim ideas to the Sahara – to Ghana and to a
neighboring kingdom called Mali. Mali became even richer than Ghana. Underneath G – Ghana – Gold on
the board, write M – Mali – King Mansa Musa – Muslim – Mecca – Mosque. (Students might remember
the word mosque from curriculum overview.)
5. Muslims believe in God and the prophets of the Bible. They believe all Muslims should try to visit Mecca,
the birthplace of their last prophet, Mohammed. (Show area of Saudi Arabia on map—page 107 is fine.) So
Muslims were traveling not just to trade, but for religious reasons.
Specialize in topic (10 minutes)
1. WE are going to do an exchange. Six groups will specialize in some topic. You will have and control your
topic. Then you will mix and trade ideas with student who specialize in something else. At the end of 5–7
minutes, I will turn off the lights and explain how to travel and trade your information.
2. Distribute a paper to the leader of each group. (6 groups with 4 or 5 people in each.) Leader reads aloud for
whole class to hear. Then pass out remaining papers to leader, who will distribute to members of his/her
group. Students will not choose their own groups; I will just group people based on the way the desks are
positioned. Adjust as necessary for absences. Here are the groups (Gardner: Verbal/Linguistic,
Visual/Spatial, Interpersonal, Logical/Mathematical).
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1 Crossing the desert. Read page 106. What might be hard about crossing the desert? Write as many
dangers or difficulties as you can.
Examples: weather, other people, health, carrying supplies, animals
2 Salt. Read the pages marked in the picture book The story of salt by Mark Kurlansky. Write some
new information about salt that you can share with the next group.
3 Trading. What is a good price for salt? Half the group pretends to be salt traders. Half the group
pretends to be gold traders. Try to agree on how much salt you should get for 8 ounces of gold. What
if you set the price too high or too low? Who has more power to set the price – the traveling traders
(from north Africa) or the people they visit (in Ghana or Mali)? Write your answers on the reverse
side.
4 Map – Look at the map on page 107, especially the mileage scale in the bottom left corner. What is
the distance between Tripoli and Timbuktu? If the caravans moved 10 miles per day, how many days
did the trip last? Answer: _________ days Bonus: How long was the trip if the caravans moved 10
kilometers per day. Answer: _________ days
5 Timbuktu – Find Timbuktu on the map on page 107. What kind of trading happened in Timbuktu
and Songhai? Write your ideas after watching the following video 2 times:
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/29493-assignment-discovery-history-of-timbuktuvideo.htm
6 Trade. Read the children’s book Mr. Lucky Straw. Compare and contrast the trade in this story with
the trading in Ghana and Mali.
2. Check on each group, prompting them with questions. After 5–7 minutes, turn off the lights.
Trade ideas in new group (15 minutes)
1. Explain how to move: One person in each group, stay where you are. Everyone else, find a new group. Each
new group should have a one, a two, a three, a four, and a five.
2. Each person in the group takes about 2 minutes to share what you learned. (Gardner: Interpersonal) (10–12
minutes)
3. After 10 minutes, turn off lights. Have students return to their own desks.
Recap (5 minutes)
1. What ideas did you trade? How does trading help you learn more than you could learn on your own?
2. To help you remember these kingdoms. Put these letters in alphabetical order: M, S, G. Ghana came first,
then Mali, then Songhai. G is for Ghana and gold. Mali has all the Ms: Muslim, mosque, and King Mansa
Musa. And S comes last.
3. We started out talking about trading things, but then we traded ideas, like what worked so well in
Timbuktu. What are problems with trading? Discuss interdependence. Is trading worth the trouble?
(Bloom: Evaluate)
4. Think of your own example of trading – not with money (Bloom: Application). I might teach a piano
lesson in exchange for someone putting in a new toilet in my bathroom. My friend and I put on a garage
sale. Before we even opened, I had taken her green coat, and she took my chess table. We agreed they
were roughly equal in value.
5. If extra time: Read Mr. Lucky Straw to promote thinking about trade. (This is a traditional tale: Yosaku
kindly trades his possessions when asked; the trades benefit him and the community.) Stop to ask
questions periodically. (Would the princess have given Yosaku a bag of gold in exchange for the
dragonfly-straw? Why or why not?) (5 minutes)
Closure: Tomorrow, Mr. Norman will have you fill out a paper based on what you learned today. You will write
something about trade on a map of Africa, and then you will give an example of trade from your own
experience.
Take a cracker with salt on your way out if you would like to!
Adaptations/Enrichment
Hearing impairment: Ensure that the student with the cochlear implant is not assigned to report on the Timbuktu video.
Provide this student with a list of lesson vocabulary words and short definitions (suggested in IEP).
Enrichment: Ask students to relate this lesson to the previous lesson on the Silk Road, Marco Polo, and Zheng He. Ask
them to predict how European explorers (next lesson) will change patterns of trading in Africa.
Self-Reflection: Was it okay to use the existing desk clusters to group the students? To compensate for lazy group
members, and to ensure that all students are exposed to all ideas, do I need to have each group report their findings to the
whole class instead of within a small group? Is this too much material for one class period? Too much lecturing? Too
many props?
Resources/Ideas not Used
http://chnm.gmu.edu/fairfaxtah/lessons/documents/africaPOSinfo.pdf http://africa.mrdonn.org/goldandsalt.html
Read picture book (http://michigan.gov/documents/Social_Studies_Trade_Books_42259_7.pdf): Ghana, story of salt,
trade, a new coat for anna, Yosaku, on the other side of the river, rosie’s birthday present
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/29493-assignment-discovery-history-of-timbuktu-video.htm and
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/29493-assignment-discovery-history-of-timbuktu-video.htm
Name: ________________________________
Pretest: Africa’s Trading Empires
1. What area of the world is shown in this map?
2. What kinds of things did people trade 1,000 years ago?
3. Explain OR give an example of being interdependent.
4. Explain OR give an example of specialize.
Name: ________________________________
Posttest: Africa’s Trading Empires
Show what you know about trade!
1. On the map, mark something that African traders had and something they wanted.
(You don’t need to mark exact locations, but you should remember general areas and
products.)
(4 points)
2. Think of another example of trade. Explain it using the words specialize, interdependent,
have, and want. (4 points)
Vocabulary from “Africa’s Trading Empires” (page 106–108)
G – Ghana – Gold
M – Mali – Mansa Musa – Muslim
S – Songhai
Has – You have or control something
Want – You should have something, but you do not have it
Specialize –You have something that someone else does not have
Independent – You don’t need anyone else
Interdependent – You need someone, and someone needs you