Middle Ages Trade Routes - Silk Road/Trans-Saharan

This is a map of 5 trade routes - Trans-Saharan, Mediterranean, Trans-Arabian, Silk Road, and Indian Ocean - that asks students to explain the map using words from a word bank. Despite what I thought (that this would be easy) my students actually had a hard time narrating what was happening in the map and including all the words in the word bank. I prompted them to use phrases like "connects ________ with ________" and "leads from _________ to _________" or "leads across/through ________" and this was more helpful.