Hygiene for Horror

Download This Lesson: Hygiene for Horror

Brief Description:  Students will understand cause and effect as well as comparing and contrasting in this lesson and by the end will be able to draw conclusions. Students will learn what contributes to the spread of infectious disease and how pest management can control the spread of infectious disease.

Focus Areas: Pest Control Methods – Cultural; Social Studies, Science, Language Arts

Focus Skills: Developing historical perspective, understanding cause and effect, comparing and contrasting points of view, drawing conclusions

Level of Involvement: AVERAGE

Objectives

• To recognize that social and cultural practices can contribute to the spread of infectious disease
• To recognize that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques contribute to the control of infectious disease

Essential Questions

• What elements of medieval life style contributed to the spread of the Plague?
• What physical characteristics of rats and/or fleas made the rapid spread of the Plague in this social and cultural climate inevitable?
• What parallels can be drawn between living conditions of the Middle Ages and current lifestyles in underdeveloped countries, urban environments and rural ghettos?
• What IPM tactics control the spread of infectious disease?

Essential Understandings

1. Lack of technology and scientific knowledge, coupled with care less human health practices, resulted in living conditions that were prime for the spread of infectious diseases during the Middle Ages.
2. Both fleas and rodents thrive in environments unhealthy for humans.
3. Poverty is often the partner of infectious disease. Therefore, in blighted areas infectious diseases can still be a threat.
4. Not only today, but in medieval times as well, attention to sanitation practices, i.e., removal of a pest’s food and water, interruption of a pest’s life cycle and destruction of pest hideouts, contributed to effective pest management.

Background

Read Handouts 1 through 4 and review Overheads 1, 2 and 3.

Vocabulary

bacteria – single celled microorganism, chiefly parasitic or saprophytic

Black Death – an outbreak of bubonic plague that was pandemic throughout Europe and Asia in the 14th century

endemic – native to a particular people or location

enzootic – affecting lower orders of animals, but not humans

epidemic – affecting many in a community, as in a disease

pandemic – affecting the majority of people in one or multiple countries

pestilence – a contagious or infectious epidemic

plague – a malignant or contagious disease

Challenge:  Slow the spread of an infectious disease!

Logistics

Time: depending on prior understanding, two to four blocks, 45 minutes per block

Group size: 3 to 30

Space: comfortable seating for group

Materials

• Handout 1 Bug Facts – Fleas *
• Handout 2 Bug Facts – Rats *
• Handout 3 Natural History *
• Handout 4 Fact List: Living Conditions in the Middle Ages (optional) *
• Overhead 1 The Cycle of the Black Plague *
• Overheads 2 and 3 Emerging Diseases *
• Worksheet 1 Group Planning Sheet *
• Worksheet 2 The Trashy Side of the Teen Ages *
• Article 1 The Trashy Side of the Middle Ages *
• Article 2 Global Cities Population Crisis – Why Should We Care? *
• Article 3 Cities and the Environment *
• Article 4 7,000,000 Americans… The Most Ignored Poverty *
• Article 5 Risk Reduction *
• overhead projector
• white/black board or chart paper

* single copy provided

Preparations

1. Prepare copies of Handouts 1 through 4 and articles
2. Set up overhead projector
3. Prepare area for group listing of brainstorming activity

ELA = English Language Arts,   HE/PE = Health Education and Physical Education,    MA = Mathematics,    SCI = Science,   SS = Social Studies,   VPA = Visual and Performing Arts

** Alignment possible only if lesson extension is done