Students explore the powerful West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai — which grew wealthy from the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade and built great centers of learning like Timbuktu.
Students will be able to…
How did empires in West Africa become some of the wealthiest and most celebrated in the medieval world — trading across a vast desert?
Project this and match each West African kingdom or place to what it was known for — tap one, then tap its description.
Tap any phase to open the teacher moves and student actions.
Why would anyone trade gold for salt? (In the desert, salt was precious!)
Students investigate.
Students analyze.
Students conclude.
Students take action.
Aligned to the C3 Framework for Social Studies and Common Core literacy in history/social studies.
Use maps to explain relationships between locations of trade and regions.
Explain barriers to trade and how they affect the flow of goods.
Analyze why developments are historically significant.
Integrate visual information with other information in texts.
Preview the three formative checks. Tap “Sample answer” to see what mastery looks like — hide them before you print for students.
Have students research Mansa Musa’s famous pilgrimage to Mecca and how his gold affected the places he passed through. A printable research sheet is in the Social Studies library.
Tap a card to flip it, then rate whether you knew it. Built from this lesson’s vocabulary.
A quick self-check with instant feedback, drawn from this lesson’s key terms.
A print-and-go review sheet with a built-in answer key. Tap “Show answer key” to reveal answers, or print the clean version for students.