The Epidemic Unit

High School Biology | 7 Lessons (~8hrs)

Unit Overview

Students will work together to recommend a mitigation strategy for a fictional town facing an epidemic. They will do this by using a computer-based simulation to design multiple experiments, collect data, engage in peer review, and construct and critique conclusions with the goal of seeking consensus. Students will grasp the methodological and social practices that scientists use to generate reliable knowledge. This unit can serve as a replacement or supplement to a Nature of Science unit.

On this page:

Alignment to NGSS
Instructional epistemic frames
Unit Map

Unit Map

Expected Prior Knowledge




[Explanation of the Unit map here - Below you will find a quick guide to each lesson in the Epidemic Unit. To find more resources and detailed plans for each lesson, click on the Lesson Title.]

The slideshow for the entire unit can be found here. LINK.

For modifications to this Unit Map, including shortened versions of this unit, click here. LINK

LESSON 1 | Why Model

Essential Question: How do scientific models help us to understand, explain, visualize, and predict natural phenomena?

Main Goal: Students will expand their understanding of what a scientific model is by engaging in a model-building activity marked by peer feedback and shared criteria for good modeling (e.g., revising models with new evidence).

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

LESSON 2 | Reliable Strategies

Essential Question: What criteria makes scientific information reliable and trustworthy?

Main Goal: Students will engage in scientific argumentation as they work together to evaluate the quality of evidence and develop criteria for good scientific practices.

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

LESSON 3 | The Epidemic Simulation

Essential Question: How can we design an experiment that would produce valid data and reliable results?

Main Goal: Students will reflect on prior experiences with infectious diseases (e.g., COVID-19). Students will be introduced to the town’s problem, explore the simulation, and apply their class criteria for good scientific practices (from Lesson 2) to analyze experimental designs.

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

LESSON 4 | Planning an Experiment

Essential Question: How does constructive feedback improve the reliability of experimental design?

Main Goal: Students will use the simulation and criteria for good scientific practices to design an experiment to explore the effectiveness of their mitigation factor (e.g., hand-washing) for the town. Students will critique their peers’ methodologies and utilize feedback to improve their designs.

Approximate Time: ~120 minutes

LESSON 5 | Resolving Disagreements

Essential Question: Why do scientists disagree with each other and how do they resolve disagreements?

Main Goal: Students will understand some of the reasons why scientists disagree and aim to seek consensus. Students will analyze scientific disagreements and work to come to consensus with their peers before applying this practice in Lesson 6 with class data.

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

LESSON 6 | Making Sense of Data

Essential Question: Why do scientists seek consensus, collaborate, communicate, critique each other, and share evidence?

Main Goal: With their peers, students will synthesize findings from multiple experiments to come to consensus on a single mitigation recommendation for the town based in all the high-quality evidence. Students will understand the social nature of scientific practice (i.e., peer review and seeking consensus)

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

LESSON 7 | Connecting to the Public Sphere

Essential Question: How do scientists responsibly communicate complex socioscientific issues to the public?

Main Goal: Students will evaluate the quality of evidence using their criteria for good scientific practices. Students will understand how the practices they used in this unit reflect those used by scientists to address real-world socioscientific issues.

Approximate Time: ~60 minutes

Alignment to NGSS

  1. Explore how disease is spread and what conditions in a population affect their spread.

  2. Understand how models are a tool scientists use to understand a phenomena and develop solutions.

Lesson Objectives

Biology

  1. Explain how large scale patterns can be created (emerge) when individuals follow simple rules.

  2. Use the example of a town to explain how programmed individual behavior can impact the spread of disease even through the system level itself (the overall spread) is not programmed.

Complex Systems

LS2.C: Ecosystem Dynamics, Functioning, and Resilience

HS-LS2-6. Evaluating claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

LS2.D: Social Interactions and Group Behavior

HS-LS2-8. Evaluate evidence for the role of group behavior on individual and species’ chances to survive and reproduce.

ETS.1.B: Developing Possible Solutions

HS-ETS1-1. Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.

ETS.1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution

HS-LS2-6. Evaluating claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.

Cross-Cutting Concepts

Instructional Epistemic Frames

[Explanation of IEFs here - Instructional Epistemic Frames (IEFs) are teacher moves intended to support students’ authentic engagement with and understanding of scientific practices.

Throughout the lesson plan, you will see these icons that depict the four different IEFs, described below.]

  • Teacher moves that focus classroom instruction on relevant, familiar, and meaningful real-world phenomena to students.
    This may include moves that emphasize the utility of science even as non-science specialists, demonstrate how classroom science can be used to solve problems, and connect classroom activities to relevant aspects of students’ everyday experiences.

  • Teacher moves that prompt and incorporate students’ ideas to shape classroom experiences.
    This may include moves that make students’ thinking visible, foster collective evidence-based explanations, and orient students to one another to make sense together.

  • Teacher moves that direct students to learn about how scientists and science, as a discipline, operate.
    This may include moves that highlight how scientific inquiry is carried out, and that science is a social practice where scientists are governed by agreed upon practices.

  • Teacher moves that engage students in learning about and applying scientific knowledge-building practices with the goal of understanding how scientific knowledge is constructed, evaluated, and improved.
    This may include moves that establish class norms that are used consistently to critique multiple hypotheses, and allow time for models to be revised based on collective and new evidence.