Infectious Diseases: Unit 2

What does it mean to be an infectious disease?

In Unit 1, the students learned that infectious agents like bacteria, viruses, and parasites can cause infectious diseases. Students also saw that infectious diseases have wide reaching impacts on both individuals and society. Now we are going to focus on how infectious diseases are identified. Contrary to popular belief, determining that a disease is caused by an infection is surprisingly difficult and we are still discovering new infectious diseases today!

Lesson 1

Infectious Disease Detectives — Typhoid Mary?

This lesson reinforces the concept that infectious diseases are caused by pathogens, and that although identifying the pathogen may be difficult it is important for treatment and/or prevention. The lesson also emphasizes that being able to identify infectious agents is a relatively new skill, largely because identification usually requires special tools, for example microscopes.

Objectives – Explain how to identify disease as infectious.
– Explain how to determine source of an infectious disease.
Activities Typhoid Mary video
Materials Printed Materials:
– Lesson worksheet

Other:
– Video (see PPT)
Homework Paragraph on historical quarantine.

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Teacher Prep: Unit 2 Lesson Videos

In the YouTube embed below, click the order listing in the upper right to toggle the display for the full playlist.