Ticks, Disease, and Climate Module

• In this four-lesson module, students will learn about the increasing tick-borne diseases in the Northeast due to climate change.
• Students will read about ticks, play a memory game to distinguish types of ticks, play an interactive game modeling the life cycle of a tick, analyze maps to determine the relationship between tick range, Lyme disease, temperature, and precipitation, and create an action plan to protect the community from tick-borne disease.

Positives

• Students will love the engaging games and many opportunities to collaborate with their peers.
• The action plan gets students positively involved in their community.

Additional Prerequisites

• The module has four lessons, but some may require more than one class period. Teachers may need to spend about 5-8 class periods on the module.
• The module provides background information with sources, guiding questions/discussion topics, student pages, class slides, and assessment rubrics for each lesson.
• There is some minimal prep teachers will need to do before each lesson, such as printing, cutting, setting up stations, etc.
• Teachers need 10-15 six-sided dice for two of the lessons.
• Students should be familiar with climate change and the specific local impacts in the Northeast region. If additional foundational instruction is needed, there is a link to two lessons that teachers can add to this module.

Differentiation

• The action plan in the final lesson can act as a summative assessment for the module, and the guide includes a rubric for this.
• There are multiple options for how teachers can implement the action plans in the community.
• Cross-curricular connections can be made with English language arts classes when students read nonfiction text on ticks and synthesize information from multiple sources.
• Teachers can make cross-curricular connections with math classes in the data collection, analysis, and graphing portions.

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.