We are on the 5th week of Plague - I am teaching the Plague Studies for One to a group of 4 homeschoolers (10, 11, 12, 13 year old). I think it is going well and the kids seem to like it. It does require a lot of parent prep work - but, of course, that can be modified to suit your time schedule. I wrote earlier about my disappointment regarding the single stakeholder (weaver) in the process. I did contact both RFP and Sheilagh Gallagher - who told me there was only one stakeholder in the classroom version as well. This doesn't seem to be true according to the one post who mentioned using the classroom unit, but whatever. We are doing the class once a week for 2 hours and the kids do homework/research in between sessions. I am going to post a few pictures....well the files seem to be too big to upload.
We made a learning issues board on a wall and made a huge risk map as well. I put together a medieval looking book from a website and put copies of all the original source documents and images into it. The kids are putting/will put together the Osbourne cut-outs: medieval village, town, port, castle and cathedral.
I think the research is going well - we spent quite a bit of time talking about original source documents vs. secondary sources, how to read a primary source, how to take notes from a close reading of a text, how to organize your findings into logical categories, and so on. One of the things I have enjoyed about this unit is the opportunity to teach how to approach an idea and how to think critically. We have spent a lot of time talking about goals for each class by looking at the matrices and how to judge or critique one's own work. The kids seem to enjoy the art and original sources. We have a few more classes of research and discovery before I ask them to write a problem definition.
I would recommend that you "take apart" the lessons and do them out of order in the research section (according to what the kid's have "asked")...I am doing them in order, but sort of wish I had done it differently.