Germs, Disease, Vaccines & Chemical Reactions

Germs, Disease, Vaccines & Chemical Reactions has been created as a teaching resource for the City of Edinburgh Council’s ‘Curiosity Club’, an Intervention Strategy initiative that is currently operating in Council schools.

The focus of the four planned lessons is to increase knowledge and awareness during and after the covid-19 pandemic and help support the pupils in developing fair tests and inquiry skills.

In each of the four/five sessions, the scene is set by Jason Leitch, Clinical Director asking pupils to act as investigators to solve a problem. The first introduces four types of microbe and where they lurk in schools. The second is a comparison experiment using a plant spray to mimic sneezing. The third session explores vaccines and fair testing on chemical reactions. The final session uses a card game to explain pandemics and global diseases patterns.

A lab-book is enclosed with optional additional worksheets. The Teacher’s guide offers help with the experiments (including photos) and basic science on the resource in addition to hyperlinked resources.

All sessions can be linked to the covid-19 pandemic if wished.
Help and resources are to be found in the Teacher’s Guide.

Contents in this resource
• Extensive Teacher’s guide
o Lesson Plan
o Resource list and safety information
o ‘Basic Facts and online resources’ (hyperlinked)
o ‘Help with the Investigation’ (includes photos)
• PowerPoint presentations. Included in these are the letter (‘hook’) from the current National Clinical Director, Professor Jason Leitch. Here are some of his videos (In the Young Scot one, he introduces himself)
• Lab Book (short reflective notebook)
• Learner worksheet for ‘sneeze experiment’ (session 2)
• Pandemic cards (for photocopying in session 4)
• Suggestions for extension

**Learning outcomes in the Curriculum for Excellence **
SCN 2-19a, SCN 2-20a, SCN 2-20b, SCN 1-13a

Second Level: Sciences Inquiry and Investigation skills:
SOC 2-14a, SOC 2-19a, MTH 2-21a

This resource was created as part of the GeoScience Outreach Course, which is a 4th year undergraduate course in the School of GeoSciences aiming to provide students with the opportunity to develop their own science communication and engagement project.

Author: Stacey Fullerton, adapted by Kay Douglas and Charlie Farley.

Unless otherwise stated, all content is released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.

OpenCovid4Ed