Students investigate how Fever 1793 and historical sources reveal what communities value during crisis, who takes responsibility, and how fear and leadership shape survival. Through archival research with library and archive partners, close reading, discussion, and critique, they build evidence-based interpretations of how people protected one another and how those choices affected the wider community. The work culminates in a public witness fair where students present museum-style posters, maps, and audio pieces that communicate their learning with empathy, clarity, and historical insight. Across the project, students strengthen communication, collaboration, critical thinking, content knowledge, and reflection by contributing to shared products and examining their own role in group learning.

Students will analyze how setting, character, and conflict in Fever 1793 reveal fear, leadership, and responsibility during a public health crisis, and they will support their interpretations with strong textual evidence. They will gather, evaluate, and synthesize information from historical fiction, period newspapers, maps, diaries, images, and audio sources to make claims about who protected the community and how those choices shaped others’ survival. Students will collaborate to create and revise a museum-style poster series or mixed-media witness display, using peer critique to strengthen clarity, accuracy, and impact. They will communicate their learning through discussion, audio reflection, and exhibition, while reflecting on how their thinking about crisis, resilience, and community responsibility has changed.

Students will create scene analyses, evidence notes from newspapers, maps, diaries, and rough drafts of posters, maps, and audio clips as they build interpretations of crisis, leadership, and responsibility. In teams, they will produce a student-made museum poster series with annotated excerpts, historical maps, images, and claims about who protected the community and how those choices affected others. They will also create a mixed-media witness display that combines student illustrations, diary quotes, newspaper headlines, and short recorded reflections. By the end, these pieces will be shared as part of The Yellow Fever Witness Fair and used in a gallery walk where students explain and defend their thinking.

Open with The Witness Walk by turning the room into a fast-moving gallery of projected epidemic-era images, short sound bites, and artifact stations such as maps, diary excerpts, and newspaper headlines. As students rotate, have them record quick reactions, notice signs of fear and resilience, and leave one question about who protects a community in crisis. Follow with a brief whole-class debrief that introduces the two guiding questions about how crisis reshapes values, leadership, responsibility, and survival. End by inviting students to predict what kinds of voices and evidence they will need to investigate through Fever 1793 and archival research.

Host a Yellow Fever Witness Fair in the library or classroom where student teams display museum-style posters, annotated maps, illustrations, diary and newspaper excerpts, and short audio clips that explain who protected the community and how fear and resilience shaped decisions. Invite families, peers, teachers, and library or archival partners to rotate through small-group stations, ask questions, and respond to student claims about crisis, leadership, and responsibility. Build in a gallery walk protocol so each student speaks about one piece of evidence, answers peer or guest questions, and shares how their interpretation changed during the project. Include a feedback wall or audio response station where visitors leave comments about what they learned and which examples of leadership or community care stood out most.