About This Lesson
The essay is lifted from the August 2015 New York State Regents Exam, but I included a document packet (in English and Spanish) so students can use them to write about some of the goods and ideas in the essay - silk, Buddhism, salt, Islam, gold, gunpowder. Essentially, a teacher can have students look at the thematic essay, then read the documents and annotate, and finally, use the documents to write the essay OR have them come in and write the essay with nothing but their memories from the documents.
