Louisiana 5th Grade Social Studies Unit 3: West African Kingdoms | Ghana, Mali & Songhai

Teach the West African Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai with a focused resource built specifically around current Louisiana Grade 5 Social Studies Standard 5.11.

Rather than overloading students with unrelated medieval content, this rebuilt unit concentrates on exactly what students need to understand about the geographic, political, economic, and cultural structures of Medieval West Africa. Standard 5.10 is intentionally not forced into this unit; that content is taught naturally in Unit 5 of the series. 

Students locate the Atlantic Ocean, Niger River, Djenne, Sahara, Gulf of Guinea, and Timbuktu; examine the growth of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai; analyze Djenne and Timbuktu as centers of trade, culture, and learning; explain the role of trans-Saharan caravan trade in moving salt, gold, enslaved people, religion, language, and cultural influences; and explain the historical importance of Mansa Musa and his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca. 

The unit combines content knowledge with LEAP-style reasoning through maps, source analysis, multiple choice, multiple select, true two-part questions, constructed response, task cards, self-check answer cards, teacher keys, and a copy/paste Google Forms quiz setup. 

Students use the exact Crack the Test Co. 5-Step Detective Method throughout, and teachers receive a vocabulary quick reference plus in a PDF format.