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Students studying Black Plague

Social studies students at Lindsey Elementary are learning about the Middle Ages and the Bubonic Plague.

The students have been making signs as part of the class project to warn other students, teachers and parents as if their classroom was a village in the Middle Ages.

Christina Ortiz, 12, said she enjoys working on the posters for the class because it helps her to learn more about what was going during the Middle Ages and the Black Plague.

“Doing the poster makes us have to think about it a little bit more,” Ortiz said. “We’re doing a title at the top and then warnings to tell people about what we are doing.”

Belynn Pierce, Lindsey School teacher, has been doing the school activity the past five years and she has been collecting works from former students for examples. Some hang on the door to the classroom.

Pierce said the students are fascinated.

“They were really excited about it,” Pierce said. “So we decided about creating posters warning fellow citizens not to enter our classroom because we’re all infested and they loved that idea. So I’ve been doing this for many years now.”

The students can draw tombstones, but they can’t put any names of students on them only celebrities if they wanted to.

The students work in groups with people they like working with Pierce said.

“They have some guidelines that have to follow on what has to be on the poster,” Pierce said. “Then they are free to design it how ever they wish, pictures or anything they want that is up to them.”

In the 1300s, the Bubonic Plague was spread by fleas on rats carried the plague and transferred the disease to humans. Another plague was the Pneumonic Plague, which spread through people coughing and sneezing. It spread and killed quicker.

Millions of people died in Asia, North Africa and Europe and eventually the plague calmed down. It was called the black plague/death due to sore that could appear on the body.