Black Death Problem-Based Learning Unit

About this curriculum

NAGC Curriculum Award-Winner! Black Death is based on the plague that devastated Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. Students, in the role of local government officials, must decide what to do to keep their town’s residents safe as the Black Death marches toward them. They must assess the level of risk the townspeople face, determine when the plague might arrive in the town, consider what might happen if it does, and decide what to do to try to prevent that from happening. National Association for Gifted Children Curriculum Award-Winner! Black Death  is based on the plague that devastated Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. The place is the northern Italian town of Lucca, and the year is 1348. Reports of the Black Death have reached Lucca. It has been marching north through Italy, laying waste to one community after another. In Florence, more than half of the city is dead or dying of the disease—and Florence is not that far away. In this unit, the students have been called as government officials to an emergency meeting to decide what the people of Lucca shoul…