Diseases

by Fellowship Agency January 9, 2019

This activity was created as part of a Gratnells What’s In My Tray CPD workshop for secondary science teachers and technicians to support practical work and delivery of the curriculum. It can be carried out as a stand-alone activity for students or combined with other activities from the session to form a STEM carousel.

You will need (per team of 4):

1 x Shallow Gratnells (F1) tray with lid
Laminated disease pathway cards – download here <hyperlink to PDF resource>
Paper and pen/pencil

This activity also works for individuals or smaller teams, just increase the amount of time allocated to complete it.

Once prepared, this activity can be repeated multiple times, reusing the same equipment for each team.

Preparation:

To make the laminated disease pathway cards, print out one copy of the disease pathway cards, cut out each individual text and picture card, laminate them all and cut out again.
Mix up the finished cards, place into the shallow Gratnells (F1) tray and put the lid on.

What to do:

Approach the tray and lift the lid.
Recreate five disease pathways in the following order. There are five cards per pathway.
Once you are confident you have the correct order, write down the letter found on each card in the same order on the answer sheet provided. Start with the image letter provided on the answer sheet.

Disease pathways – example answer sheet

(A to E represents the five image cards and the empty boxes are for inserting the letters found on the corners of the pathway cards)

Tidy up time:

Put all laminated cards back into the tray, mix them up and replace the lid.

When all participants/teams have completed the activity, swap answer sheets with the next team and mark the answers.

The activity leader will put the list of correct answers up on the screen/board and call them out.

Answers

A, J, L, O, S – Malaria

B, F, M, P, X – Obesity

C, I, T, V, W – Ebola

D, G, N, R, Y – HIV

E, H, K, Q, U – Tuberculosis

1 point per correct line. Total of 5 points available.

Other things to try:

Add a few more human diseases to the activity, for example influenza or the common cold, Polio and Chicken Pox.
Diversify into plant diseases such as Blight, Bleeding Canker or Horse Chestnut Leaf Blotch or look at animal diseases such as Bird Flu, Foot and Mouth or Rabies.

Health & Safety

As with all Gratnells Learning Rooms What’s In My Tray activities, you should carry out your own risk assessment prior to undertaking any of the activities or demonstrations.