Infectious Disease: Evolving Challenges to Human Health
NIH Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases
Activity 2 - Disease Detectives
 Overview of Activity
Students take on the role of doctors, epidemiologists, and laboratory scientists to investigate the appearance of a mystery disease in a local population in a collaborative jigsaw format.
Activity Type: In Class Exploratory Group Activity
URLs: http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/Diseases/guide/
activity2-1.htm
Grade Level: 9-12
Level of Difficulty:Intermediate
Amount of Time Required for Activity: One 40-minute Class Period
Recommended Uses:
Prior to attending the exhibit, this activity may be used to engage students in thinking about how infectious diseases spread by taking on the role of different health professionals.
After visiting the exhibit, it may be used to reinforce how different health professionals study the spread of infectious disease.
Description
In this activity, students will take on the role of epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and medical doctors who are studying a disease outbreak. Following a jigsaw format, first they will be divided into small groups with individuals who have received packets with the same background (epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and medical doctors) and will look over the information to determine the cause of the disease. After coming to a conclusion in their small groups and writing their respective reports, they will group with a team that is made up of each of the different individuals (epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and medical doctors) to compare their conclusions. They will then need to collaborate and combine their analyses to determine what the true cause of the disease is. Students will find that the laboratory scientists have the most conclusive data and will need to discuss together how to make sense of all of their information combined to write their final report.
This activity was developed as part of a series designed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Relation to the Science Standards
High School
Content Standard A - Understandings About Scientific Inquiry
Content Standard E - Understandings about Science and Technology
Content Standard F - Personal and Community Health
Content Standard G - Nature of Scientific Knowledge
Content Standard G - Science as a Human Endeavor
Related Part of the Exhibit
Public Health
Tracing Emerging Infectious Diseases
Vector Control and Malaria
Additional Related Links
http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/Diseases/guide/
pdfs/ACT2M.PDF
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