Module 9: Vaccine Development
The Story...
While looking up information about treatments for COVID-19 on behalf of their sick friend Tash, Ray and June find out that many different countries and companies are attempting to produce a vaccine for the disease. Though they understand what vaccines are, Ray and June don’t understand how they work. Together they investigate how vaccines work within the human body. How do vaccines produce a resistance to biological pathogens, and how are vaccines discovered and produced?
Performance Expectations:
- List the types of organisms and molecules that can make us sick.
- Diagram an immune response to the presence of foreign organisms and label the components.
- List symptoms of illness during an COVID-19 infection and the possible causes of those symptoms.
- Describe the concept of immune memory and its role in making us less susceptible to infection.
- Explain how a vaccine generates immunity without making us sick.
- Describe how the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine is determined.
- Suggest an equitable plan for distributing the vaccine.
Module 9 Challenges
Learning Targets:
- I can define “pathogen”.
- I can compare and contrast 4 main pathogens based on their structure and how they cause infection.
- I can develop a model (diagram) to explain how the immune system works.
- I can describe how B-cells and T-cells function
Estimated Time: 60 minutes
Learning Targets:
- I can explain how vaccines work.
- I can compare and contrast different approaches to vaccine development.
Learning Targets:
- I can identify testing parameters for a vaccine.
- I can prioritize factors to consider for vaccine distribution.
Estimated time: 60 minutes