Planning

Killer Disease Team

Author: Michael Bunting l Suitable for: Early Years, Planning

Background

The Curriculum

Understanding: that history is about evaluating and piecing together sources of evidence; that people’s belief systems can differ markedly and are grounded in their history, environment and culture; that there can be a tension between animal/plant preservation and economic development and that there can be a number of reasons why people might ‘destroy’ the environment around them.
Skills: Planning, working together, collecting resources, asking questions, applying imagination, negotiation, empathy, hypothesis, inference, evaluation of sources, being organised.
Knowledge: That medicines can be extracted from some plants, and have been used in many cultures throughout human history; that disease epidemics have struck in the past and still do so in the present; that animals and plants do not just live anywhere or eat anything; that there are a variety of historical sources.
Values: That being a global citizen means caring for people, animals and places that we may never meet or visit. That human life is worth fighting for.

Developing the Situation

Themes

Potential inquiry questions

What are diseases?
How are diseases spread?
Do diseases seek out certain people?
What do humans need to survive?
What’s more important: scientific progress or people’s belief systems?
Are humans worth more than animals?
Is it every justified to sacrifice the lives of animals?
Do we save species at any cost to ourselves?

The situation in detail

(with tensions added)
On analysing samples, it has been discovered that a particular plant offers a cure to a plague-like disease.
Disastrously, since the samples were gathered, the area from which it was obtained has been decimated by loggers, killing every last plant. However, there are various stories; some suggesting that a plant matching the same description was once found on a nearby island many years ago. Some suggest that the plant, and the animal that feeds on it, may have been sacred to a tiny, mysterious tribe on the island, but this has never been confirmed: the island is actively volcanic and the tribe were once said to be headhunters.

A team has been tasked with finding out whether the plant could and does exist on the island, but the mission is veiled in secrecy. No one wants the sufferers of this disease to have their hopes dashed once again.

Designing the expert frame

The team of experts

The Killer Disease Team: a multi-disciplinary team of exploratory scientists, historians, geographers and survival experts set up by the World Health Organisation to seek out cures for the seemingly incurable. The team focuses on find cures from the natural world and spends time in some of the most remote parts of the world. It applies its knowledge of past epidemics to find a way into understanding diseases of the present.

Clients

The unfortunate sufferers of the plague-like disease that is claiming the lives of whole families across the world.

Comissions

1. Seek out other potential areas where the plant might still exist – piecing together evidence from hearsay, scientists journals and other possible experts.
2. Identify whether the island might provide the conditions necessary for the plant to exist.
3. Plan expedition to the island: permissions, equipment, travel plans, food sources, safety, shelter, communications, electricity, native peoples, dangerous animals.
4. Land on the island and establish camp. Make shelters from materials available.
5. Use evidence, understanding habitats and clues that arise to locate plant.
6. Establish whether the plant is exactly the same as the one destroyed.
7. Identify whether it is in the food chain of a native animal.
8. Negotiate with native peoples.
9. Investigate ways of cultivating / harvesting the plant to use as medicine in a way that satisfies everyone’s needs.

Possible steps in

Note that these are only possibilities. If the children come up with better ideas (which is likely) and you have the confidence to go with them, then abandon or amend as necessary!

Today’s situation: We are trying to creating an opening scene for our story. A plant, offering the cure to the disease, was growing here last time we visited, but now all that is left is debris from logging. I could just tell the children all of this, but it becomes their story if they are able to make discoveries and shape elements of the story collaboratively.

  1. Actual words used: “You know we were learning about settings? Well, see what you think to this. It’s pretty unusual for us to start with a bag full of things, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to lay these pieces of paper and objects out in a row and just see if you spot any connections (withhold newspaper article for later). Are you noticing anything as I lay them on the floor? Do you want to know anything more about them? Just ask if you do.” Accept all of children’s suggestions. Try not to give too many clues; just feed their own comments back to them: “oh, I see
”, “so, you’re saying
”, “we think it might be
”, “you’d like to know whether
”
  2. Invite TA / one of the children to become an effigy (kind of statue that can be brought to life) in the centre of the circle. “Sometimes, using a real person can help us to understand more about what’s going on. I can tell you that all of these various items form a setting around our person in role over there. This person is feeling incredibly worried and upset. Do you think we could ‘sculpt’ our statue to show just how worried and upset?” Work together to make the effigy tell some of the story with his / her body language: “So, apart from worried and upset, can you think of any other words that this person might be feeling?”
  3. Encourage children to place pieces of paper around the effigy to create the setting. Without using value-judgements, ask the children to verbalise any connections they have made: “Can we, just for a moment, say what we can see?. Someone might say something like “I can see a cigarette next to an oil stain””. Walk up and put the newspaper article in the hands of the effigy: “
and here’s one more piece in the puzzle; perhaps it might be worth reading
?”
  4. Read newspaper article together and encourage the children to hypothesise about its meaning and significance. Does it help to make sense of what’s going on? Does anyone want to more one of the props to tell the story more clearly? (encourage children to justify why)
  5. “When s/he gets back to camp, this person will have to tell the people gathered there that the plant has been destroyed
just think, which different groups of people are going to be there, waiting to hear the news?” – List groups of people, i.e. colleagues, media, etc. as the children suggest them.

Possible next steps
.

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