How can vaccinating pigs protect people?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Rebecca McLean and Professor Simon Graham, vaccinologists at the Pirbright Institute, UK. They are developing a vaccine against Nipah virus in pigs, which will prevent humans from becoming infected.

• This resource also contains an interview with Rebecca and Simon and offers an insight into careers in vaccinology. If your students have questions for Rebecca and Simon, they can send them to them online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Rebecca and Simon will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Rebecca and Simon’s research and challenges them to consider how they would contain a future outbreak of Nipah virus.

• The article and activity sheet are also available in Chinese and Bengali through the weblink below.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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