Infectious Respiratory Disease

Appendix on Implementing District Standards

This unit is designed to teach both science and social studies standards in the DCPS 4^th-grade curriculum. With regard to the former, the science curriculum requires that students “construct an argument” that organisms have internal and external structures that support their survival, growth, and propagation.  The first section of this unit addresses this standard because the curriculum teaches students the internal and external structures of viruses.  Furthermore, this section also introduces students to the process of how viruses use their internal and external structures to seize cellular anatomy of host cells to facilitate the replication and the survival of the virus.

This unit also teaches relevant social studies standards as well. Generally, the 4^th-grade social studies curriculum focuses on European colonial expansion and colonial America.  In the study of the colonial era, standard 4.2 requires that students “describe the legacy and cultures of the major indigenous settlements.” This unit addresses this standard because the curriculum teaches that the legacy of inoculation and vaccination began with indigenous cultures of the East, namely the ancient Chinese civilization. Later, during colonial expansion, Europeans witnessed and adopted the idea of inoculation as a means to treat disease in their own culture. Consequently, this curriculum shows that the legacy of a vaccination is a long story that has its beginnings in indigenous cultures of China.

Additionally, standard 4.7 requires that students understand “the political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era.” This unit addresses this standard by teaching the history of Lady Wortley Montague and Edward Jenner.  These were two individuals from the colonial era who had a significant impact on the development of vaccines in the treatment of infectious diseases. Lady Wortley and Jenner both believed in the beneficial impact vaccines could have on eradicating the horrors of infectious diseases. Consequently, Lady Wortley and Jenner helped to establish early public health institutions that advocated for the development and use of vaccines as a means to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. Therefore, this unit also teachers how public health institutions that advocated for vaccines originated in the colonial era.   

Finally, social studies standard 4.11 requires that students “compare and contrast 15th-through-18th-century America and the United States of the 21st century with respect to population, settlement, patterns, resource use, transportation systems, human livelihoods, and economic activity.” This curriculum also explores innovations in vaccinology that were developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  More specifically, the curriculum looks at the work of Drs. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman and their research that developed the first mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.  The development of the mRNA vaccine was a tremendous advancement in the science of vaccinology, especially with regard to the science of Lady Wortley and Edward Jenner in the 18^th century. Therefore, this curriculum prepares students to compare and contrast 15th-through-18th-century America and the United States of the 21st century with regard to the science of vaccinology and public health interventions.