Students chose to play a role play from one of the following: a merchant, farmer, priest, travel guide, physician, or scribe. They were asked to consider the following driving questions:

Additionally students were asked to consider:

From the project web site:

In 7th grade social studies students studied the impact of the Black Plague politically, socially, and economically on European society in the fourteenth century. (California social studies content standards). They also tied that study to the present. Using primary sources students found that in 1347 the poet Petrarch wrote:

"Oh, happy people of the future who have not known these horrors and will, perhaps, class our testimony with fables. We have, perhaps deserved these punishments-but so did our forefathers. May posterity not merit the same."

Students then had to decide if we have seen anything like this in modern times.

Students read an adaptation of "The Pardoner's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. They also examined the illustration of Lubeck's "Dance of Death" and talked about why that might have been the graffiti of the time. They also discussed what our graffiti might say about us 500 years from now!

Students demonstrated their understanding by creating a journal entry from the perspective of someone living at the time.

In science students learned about monerans and bacterial infections. They demonstrated their understanding by creating a simulation of how blood cells become infected by the yersinia pestis bacterium, the bacterium that transmits Bubonic Plague.

Students put everything they had learned into a multimedia presentation. The HyperStudio, Stagecast Creator, and Cocoa projects on this page are some of the students' work. The rubric used for scoring the projects was developed by the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project.

• This project is a study of the effects of the Bubonic Plague on the lives of different members of society in Europe during the Middle Ages. Students learn of its impact on the social, political, and economic aspects of society. This multi-disciplinary task is designed so that students will get an historical perspective, and also be able to tie that to modern science.
• In science students learned about monerans and bacterial infections. They demonstrated their understanding by creating a simulation of how blood cells become infected by the yersinia pestis bacterium, the bacterium that transmits Bubonic Plague.

• Pre and post tests
• Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project Rubric
• Peer review
• Journals
• Multimedia Product

Background research

• Students chose to role play one of the following: a merchant, farmer, priest, travel guide, physician, or scribe.
• Students wrote a journal entry from the viewpoint of a person who lived in Europe during the 1300s including an annotated bibliography.
• Students became a person in the twentieth century who found the the 14^th century journal. They compared current history to what it might have been had the Black Plague not happened.
• Students studied the Bubonic Plague in Science
• Student decided upon and created a multimedia presentation that tied all their research together.