Using Vaccines to Fight Outbreaks

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are

Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
Pedagogic Effectiveness
Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

Initial Publication Date: September 14, 2020 | Reviewed: August 4, 2022 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

What exactly is a vaccine? Can vaccines prevent outbreaks? How effective does a vaccine need to be to help a population during an outbreak? Students will explore these questions and more in this lesson plan by first learning the biology behind vaccines. They will then use Science Buddies' SimPandemic, a free online tool, to model different vaccine parameters to understand how vaccines affect both individuals and populations during a COVID-19 outbreak.

KEY WORDS: Vaccines, Outbreaks, Vaccine Effectiveness, Disease Modeling, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Pandemic

Epidemics, Pandemics, Health Sciences | Informal, General Public

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Context

Audience

Using Vaccines to Fight Outbreaks is written for grades 6 to adult and is NGSS-aligned. Tailored for an uncertain school year, this lesson plan can be conducted remotely using the Student Worksheet as a guide.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Elementary School Science

How the activity is situated in the course

Using Vaccines to Fight Outbreaks is one of a series of lesson plans to teach about the science of COVID and infectious diseases.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

- Explain how vaccines interact with the immune system.
- Differentiate between how vaccines protect individuals and populations.
- Investigate how parameters like vaccine effectiveness and percentage of the population that has been vaccinated can affect the outcomes of viral outbreaks.

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Analyze and interpret data, construct an argument supported by empirical evidence, evaluate evidence.

Other skills goals for this activity

Discussion, answering questions, writing answers to questions, utilizing SimPandemic, viewing videos, creating and testing hypothesis.

Description and Teaching Materials

Take advantage of a unique opportunity to engage students in science as it's unfolding around them. Vaccines are likely to be a critically important tool for ending the pandemic. Using Vaccines to Fight Outbreaks explains why and how.

Download the Student Worksheet here. The accompanying Lesson Plan, a Google Classroom version of this student worksheet, and an answer sheet are available for free at: https://sbgo.org/vaccine-lesson-serc

ScienceBuddies-SimPandemic-Worksheet-VaccinesFightOutbreaks-200820-serc.pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 291kB Sep11 20)

Teaching Notes and Tips

Teacher Prep / Background Information is included in the free Lesson Plan, which is available at: https://sbgo.org/vaccine-lesson-serc

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Assessment

Students' worksheets can be used to assess their learning over the course of the lesson. Alternatively, students can write out their scientific explanations for the Scenario in the Reflect section.

References and Resources

A detailed Lesson Plan, a Google Classroom version of this student worksheet, and an answer sheet are available for free at: https://sbgo.org/vaccine-lesson-serc

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