Black Plague History and ELA PBL

Each year, when January rolls around and kiddos are coming back from break, our 7th graders dive into the world of Medieval Europe. In ELA, I've tried to figure out ways to connect to their History curriculum, with mixed results. This year, I needed a revamp.

My first step was to look at my students and school. Our 7th grade group is incredibly creative and loves artistic activities. This is a huge motivating factor on projects. I also knew I wanted the academic focus to be supported research and synthesis, with an emphasis on literacy activities and primary source analysis. Our academy also has a 5 Pillar focus for students and there needed to be tie-ins to these overarching themes (Critical Thinking, Building Leaderships/Partnerships, Demonstrating Technical Savviness, Appreciating Cultural Diversity, and Global Thinking).

My next step was trying to figure out the topics that would work for the time period and engage my students in a Language Arts setting. Over the summer, I participated in a primary source teacher institute through the Library of Congress and was introduced to the Stanford History Education Group's "Reading Like a Historian" curriculum. The World History lessons provided a jumping off point for my unit planning. I loved the two Black Death lessons and thought to myself, how could people in the middle ages avoid the risk factors in the spread of this disease? This became the jumping off point for my essential question: How could city officials protect citizens in Medieval towns from the Black Death? 

With this driving question in mind, the materials for the unit came together quickly. I created a data set for students to read, annotate and categorize to get a deeper understanding of how the societal make up of Medieval Europe contributed to risk of plague. Students analyzed the primary sources with the engaging Stanford activities as well, synthesizing their learnings into a chart with Risks and Countermeasures. 

The big challenge for me in this process was determining the requirements for this project. I wanted to give my students parameters, while also allowing flexibility in the process. I decided that the end result should be a presentation to their peers, utilizing both a visual layout of a medieval town or castle as well as a poster to help organize their ideas for the presentation. Knowing that they will be writing problem/solution essays as the next genre we hit, I wanted to introduce some of the academic vocabulary, so students needed to show cause, effect and solutions on their posters. 

The visual component of the project needed to illustrate the risk factors for plague. This is where students really surprised me. The project ideas ran the gambit from models built of cardboard and other craft supplies to Minecraft worlds and even student produced videos. These projects will be displayed at our Renaissance Faire for parents and families to explore.