Bring the history of the transatlantic slave trade to life with this rigorous nonfiction reading comprehension resource for KS3/KS4 students. This no-prep pack pairs a detailed four-page informational text with differentiated comprehension, vocabulary, source-analysis and historical-thinking activities.

What Students Will Learn
Students explore how European colonisation, economic demand, Atlantic shipping networks, racialised chattel slavery and organised violence combined to create and sustain the transatlantic slave trade. The text covers capture and forced marches, coastal confinement, the Middle Passage, the sale and forced labour of enslaved people, family separation, slave codes, cultural survival, resistance, maroon communities and the Haitian Revolution — then moves through abolition, emancipation, apprenticeship, sharecropping, segregation, voter suppression, reparations and the lasting effects of racial and economic inequality.

Rather than framing slavery as mainly a United States story, this resource emphasises its true Atlantic scope — West and Central Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, Spanish America, mainland North America and Haiti.

Primary Source Analysis Built In
Carefully selected historical illustrations, advertisements, ship plans, first-person accounts, photographs and captions train students to evaluate evidence like historians. They compare the Brookes slave-ship plan against Olaudah Equiano’s testimony, interpret an engraving of a forced march, analyse an image of plantation labour in Antigua and consider the historical significance of Elmina Castle.

Perfect For: Black History Month, world history, slavery and abolition units, the Middle Passage, the Haitian Revolution, colonialism, human rights and nonfiction reading comprehension practice.

Reading Level
The four-page text is written at approximately 1100L–1200L, best suited to KS3/KS4. Moderate-to-complex sentence structures, clearly developed explanations, contextual vocabulary support and varied assessment formats encourage close reading without oversimplifying this difficult subject.

What’s Included

Comprehension & Assessment Pack
15 Activities | 25 Student Sheets | Complete Answer Keys | 48 Pages

• Four-page illustrated informational text
• Two-page condensed version of text
• 13-question written-response activity
• Chronology, consequence and evidence classification
• Evidence → Claim → Qualification activity
• Misconception Correction activity
• Historical Tensions and Visual Source Analysis
• Vocabulary and Concepts in Context
• Mixed-format comprehension review
• Two differentiated SAT-style multiple-choice quizzes
• Two levels of vocabulary matching
• 30-statement True/False assessment
• 25-blank cloze summary
• Crossword puzzle
• Word search
• Complete answer keys and model responses