World Bank Group. The Black Death. A Great Plague killed nearly half of the people of Europe during in the fourteenth century. A plague is a widespread illness. The plague was also known as "the Black Death" because of the black spots that formed on the skin of diseased people. The devastation of the plague brought great changes to Europe. The sickness apparently began in Central Asia. The first sign of the plague was often an ache in the limbs. The swiftness of the disease, the enormous pain and the grotesque appearance of its victims served to make the plague especially terrifying. Europeans were susceptible to disease because many people lived in crowded surroundings in an era when personal hygiene was not considered important. Some Europeans believed the plague was a sign from God. The Great Plague transformed European society.
The Great Plague continued to affect cities from time to time for hundreds of years. Download this lesson as Microsoft Word file or as an Adobe Acrobat file. Listen as Mr. Renaissance -- Out of the Middle Ages. In the feudal structure of the Middle Ages, the nobles who lived in the country provided the king with protection in exchange for land. Peasants worked the land for the nobles, for which they received protection and their own small parcels of land.
These rural peasants worked from sunup to sundown, but even the nobles had few creature comforts. In feudal cities, where there was a small middle-class population, life was a little easier and individuals had the freedom to pursue whatever trade or industry they liked. In the late Middle Ages, when the threat of invasion from barbarians had lessened, people left the country for towns and cities so they could engage in more profitable pursuits. The Plague Begins Life in the city was soon to change drastically. During the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (1350-1450) the bubonic plague, also called the "Black Death," devastated one half of the population of Europe. The Plague's Effect on the Economy. ODYSSEY/Homepage. Learn about the Holocaust. History Link 101. Free Middle School Social Studies Lesson Plans. Kidipede - History for Kids home page NEW!
Kidipede's pages organized according to California state standards Teachers' guides for what to do in class (religion, philosophy, environment...) Scavenger hunt through the site for certain information (lists of things to search for here) Have the students put together questions for their peers to answer. Create a History Museum with each kid making an artifact; invite their parents for museum night. Put together a class newspaper about China (for instance), with creative sports pages, food pages, political news and religious news. Put together what was happening all over Europe, Asia and Africa in a particular time period (use the maps section). Have students take different sides of a war (the Crusades, the Punic Wars, the American Revolutionary War, the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, the Hundred Years' War) and hold peace talks to try to settle their differences.
Do hands-on craft projects like spinning or and weaving a piece of cloth. Globalization101.org | globalization | globalisation | what is globalization | globalization dilemmas | globalization debates | pros cons globalization | global issues | international relations | international issues. The Middle Ages: Feudal Life. Home [CRF: Educating About Immigration] Home. Ited Nations Cyberschoolbus. Constitute.