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Classroom Resources | Next Activity
Episode Three: Dangerous Friends and Friendly Enemies
Activity 1: Spread the Word/Not Disease!
Grades 3-12
Objectives:
- Students will understand and help teach basic concepts related to
health promotion and disease prevention.
- Students will understand the helpful and harmful roles of microbes
in the human body and in the disease process.
- Students will chart the spread of diseases within the school community
and draw conclusions about ways to promote disease prevention.
Ties to Broadcast and Web Sites:
- Intimate Strangers: Dangerous Friends and Friendly
Enemies
Excerpt from start through "A Friendly Enemy" (approximately
1:45 to 23:44)
- Intimate Strangers: Creators of the Future
Excerpt "Resistance Fighters" about development of antibiotic
resistant tuberculosis microbes (approximately 4:30-16:13)
- Fight Bac!
Food safety education and activities for teaching about fighting bacteria.
- Infection,
Detection, Protection
Informative website for students about microbes and disease. Includes
a cartoon story "How Lou Got the Flu" which traces the flu from China
to the US, information about preventing infection, and an excellent
"Mixed-up Microbe Mystery" which involves students in helping an epidemiologist
track the cause of an epidemic of salmonella in Denver in 1996.
- Fight Bac! Around
Your Community
An interesting FBI case for students to solve about how microbes can
spread in daily life. (PDF file, requires Acrobat
Reader)
Procedure for Classroom Activity:
- Review with students the ways that disease can spread. Discuss the
various methods of transmission for different diseases and the need
to understand this in order to work on controlling the spread of disease
within a community. Show Intimate Strangers: Dangerous
Friends and Friendly Enemies excerpt. Discuss the relationship
between microbes and humans. How many species of microbes inhabit humans?
Where can they be found? What is their purpose? In what ways are they
helpful and harmful? What happens when the balance between microbes
and humans becomes upset?
- Use "Caught Red-Handed" lesson from Intimate Strangers Teacher's Guide.
This activity demonstrates very vividly how hand-washing affects the
spread of microbes.
- Share student knowledge with younger students by asking them to peer-teach
portions of these lessons to younger students within the school. Ask
students to make a list of ways to control the spread of bacteria within
their school community. Make posters, write school public service announcements,
community radio promos, and/or develop puppet shows to spread the word
about ways to control the spread of bacteria.
- Organize students in a school-wide activity to chart the spread of
disease in the school building. Ask the students to develop a large
graph or chart to post in a prominent location within the school to
show weekly the number of students in each classroom with a cold, the
flu, chicken pox, or other disease. Use math skills to analyze the data
to determine the spread of disease. If possible, compare statistics
for the current year with any available data from previous years.
- Ask students to draw conclusions about what can be done within the
school community to further reduce the spread of disease.
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