Students investigate how historical trade networks connect to modern globalization and use one-variable statistics, current sanctions data, and multiple perspectives to answer how the U.S. uses economic sanctions in world affairs. They begin with a Data Detective Challenge, study trade-route artifacts or digital archives with a museum or historical partner, and build toward a public service campaign and a physical economic-system model that argue for a clear policy recommendation. Across six weeks, students research, discuss, analyze data, revise through weekly reflection checkpoints on confidence, persistence, and data use, and prepare for a Policy Pulse Forum with an oral defense scored by rubric and growth notes.

Students will analyze historical trade routes, current sanctions cases, and one-variable statistics to explain how economic networks spread both benefits and harm across regions and time. They will develop and defend a recommendation about U.S. sanctions policy using evidence from datasets, current events, historical sources, and artifacts or digital archives from a community partner. They will build a physical model of an economic system and create a public service campaign that clearly communicates how sanctions affect governments, businesses, and everyday people. Through weekly reflection, peer critique, and oral defense, they will strengthen inquiry, discussion, source evaluation, quantitative reasoning, and revision skills.

Students create a public service campaign that includes posters, short scripts, and infographic cards explaining how sanctions influence world affairs and offering one evidence-based recommendation for government action. Throughout the project, they also produce annotated data displays, source comparison notes, and draft claims that connect medieval trade-route patterns to modern globalization and sanctions. As a major performance product, each team builds a physical model of an economic system and prepares an oral defense explaining trade patterns, sanctions impacts, and the statistical choices behind their argument. These products are refined through weekly reflection and revision checkpoints and shared publicly during the Policy Pulse Forum mock hearing and campaign gallery.

Open with a Data Detective Challenge in which teams analyze a real sanctions dataset, identify patterns with one-variable statistics, and post quick claims about who is affected, how influence is exerted, and what data they still need. Then reveal the essential question and have students compare their first claims to artifacts or digital images from a museum or world history center’s trade route collection to connect historic exchange systems to modern globalization and sanctions. Close with a short discussion protocol on competing perspectives and a first reflection entry on confidence, persistence, and use of data, ending with one goal for the next work cycle.

Host a Policy Pulse Forum in which students present their physical economic-system models and deliver brief oral defenses in a mock public hearing on US sanctions policy. Set up a public service campaign gallery with posters, short scripts, and infographic cards, and invite families, peers, and community partners from a museum, historical society, or world history center to respond with sticky-note feedback and questions. Include a station that highlights how students connected 13th- and 14th-century trade patterns to modern globalization and sanctions through data displays. Close the event with student reflection cards that note how their confidence, persistence, and use of data changed over the project.