Virginia SOL WG.16.b
The Standard
analyzing global trade and communication networks.
Virginia Standards of Learning for History and Social Science · The student will apply history and social science skills to understand the impact of the growing interdependence of the world by
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students read maps, diagrams, and data to trace how goods, money, and information move between places. They explain how shipping routes, air travel, internet cables, and satellites connect economies and people.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can trace a product or message through several countries and identify the networks involved. They use map or data evidence to explain how a disruption in one place affects others.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think countries produce all parts of a product in one place. They may also confuse communication networks with transportation routes or assume digital communication has no physical infrastructure.
How to Assess It
- Give students a map of shipping routes and undersea internet cables. Ask them to identify one major connection and explain one effect if it were disrupted.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups country, product, port, and cable cards, then use yarn to build a network showing how goods and information travel.
Ask students to write which matters more to global business, fast shipping or fast communication, using two specific examples.
Play a route challenge where teams move a product from producer to buyer while drawing event cards for port closures and internet outages.
Inspect labels from classroom items, map their countries of origin, and research how one item likely reached the local store.
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Printable WG.16.b Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to WG.16.b, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- WG.1.c
analyzing how cultural characteristics, including the world’s major languages, ethnicities, and religions, link or divide regions; and
- WG.11.d
explaining important economic characteristics, including the distribution of economic activities and global trade.
- WG.16.a
examining factors that influence the distribution of economic activities and trade; and
- WG.4.d
explaining important economic characteristics, including the distribution of economic activities and global trade.
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