Many adult education teachers are looking for resources and developing lessons to help our students understand the coronavirus. We will use this post to create a space where teachers can share the materials they find and/or create. We will try to update this post once a week with new resources we find and/or hear about. Please share any links to materials that you bring to your students in the comments below.
BASIC INFORMATION
- US CDC (Center for Disease Control) Coronavirus page – in-depth basic information on What You Should Know (How it spreads, Symptoms, Prevention & Treatment, Testing and FAQs) and Situation Updates (including national case count including cases, deaths, and states with reported cases). This page is updated regularly.
- NPR informational comic (& 3-minute audio clip) for kids
- NYC Health Department Coronavirus page – includes very basic info (symptoms and prevention) but may be worth checking out for the case count with the number of tests and positives that they update fairly regularly.
- Videos from the World Health Organization
- Brief introductory video – includes a brief history, transmissions, symptoms, prevention (4:48)
- The Times in Plain English is a great resource in general that has several articles on the Coronavirus
- NEWSELA has opened up access to its articles to support teachers, students and families. You still need to join, but access is free. They have a growing collection of articles about coronavirus that can be adapted for different reading levels at the click of a button.
- What are the symptoms? Is there a cure? and other questions about the coronavirus (article)
- a 32 minute episode called Understanding the Coronavirus and How Germs Spread from the kid’s science podcast Brains On!
- A library of high interest/low literacy materials about the Coronavirus. Materials include simple infographics up to texts at a 9th-grade reading level. You can search the directory for easier and harder to read materials.
HOW to PROTECT YOURSELF & PREPARE FOR THE CORONAVIRUS
- From World Heath Organizations
- Proper/thorough handwashing is a key message in the COVID-19 campaign. Here’s a WebMD video: Yes, There is a Right Way to Wash Your Hands
- Lehman College is producing useful easy visuals to share on stopping the spread of germs (available in English and Spanish)
- How To Wash Your Hands – brief video showing proper hand washing technique and some FAQs about hand washing
- Why Soap Works (article)
MATH and SCIENCE: Data and Statistics
- This infographic created by the NY Times shows the impact of social distancing by showing the chain of transmission (and how social distancing breaks it). A good visual of exponential growth. Similar to the App Problem in the CUNY HSE Math Framework.
- Rep. Katie Porter’s Sister, Dr. Emily Porter, Explains The Power of Social Distancing in a 5 and a half minute video that uses some simple numbers and percentages to demonstrate how social distancing helps spare hospital resources and save lives. Good for pausing at various points to have students do some of the math.
- This animated bar graph shows Covid-19 versus the US daily average cause of death from 3/1/2020 to 4/6/2020 (and it is still being updated. The bars are animated, so you can see the rise of Covid-19 related deaths and compare them to other cases of death.
- This three-minute video, What’s Math Got to Do With It?, uses a version of the Job Offer problem to explain the power of exponential growth in the context of the spread of Covid-19.
- What This Chart Actually Means for COVID-19? – an accessible video from PBS explaining “flattening the curve,” exponential growth, and that graph. It’s one of the clearest explanations explaining what may seem to some as extreme measures or overreactions. Recommended.
- Coronavirus Infographics – a series of graphs and infographics from the website, Information is Beautiful. Includes graphs (line graphs, bar graph, scatter plots) on seriousness of symptoms, recovery rates, a-risk age groups and existing conditions, infection trajectories by country, etc.
- A sequence of infographics for understanding how Covid-19 antibody testing works (including false and true positives and false and true negatives).
- The Workers Who Face the Greatest Coronavirus Risk – a graph and several charts exploring the infection risk of working in different jobs. The graph measures how often workers in a given profession are exposed to infection and how closely they work with other people. The charts look at things like who can work from home and percentages of workers with different jobs with paid sick leave or personal leave.
- The Exponential Power of Now – this article talks about exponential growth in terms of the spread of coronavirus and the impact of social distancing.
- Flattening the Coronavirus Curve – this article uses math to talk about the importance of slowing the spread of coronavirus infection
- Why Outbreaks like Coronavirus Spread Exponentially and How to Flatten the Curve – this article uses animation to show how the virus spreads exponentially, and how social distancing can slow the spread of infection.
- Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak – Interactive maps (World, US, Asia, Europe), updated daily, that track cases of the coronavirus. Also includes charts with number of confirmed cases and number of deaths by country. Updated regularly.
- Tracking Every Coronavirus Case in the US – a full US map with all cases. Also has a bar graph looking at new cases each day, a chart with cases and deaths by state, and a chart with information on the ways the disease was contracted for the 10 highest number of cases.
- Interactive Map from the John Hopkins Center for Systems of Science and Engineering – tracking confirmed cases, total deaths, and total recovered. Updated regularly.
- “We’re Reading the Coronavirus Numbers Wrong” – An Op-Ed piece from the NY Times written by mathematician John Allen Paulos.
- Dangerous Numbers? Teaching about Data and Statistics with the Coronavirus Outbreak – some ideas from the NY Times Learning Network on using the John Allen Paulos Op-Ed piece in math class
- This activity from the NY Times Learning Network is centered around a graph that compares the coronavirus to other infections diseases in terms of fatality rates and the average number of people infected by each sick person – What’s Going on in this Graph? – Coronavirus Outbreak
- How Bad Will The Coronavirus Outbreak Get? Here are 6 Factors – the article would need to be broken up and adapted for ABE students, but there are some useful visuals including an animation modeling the spread of coronavirus and a less contagious disease, the distance the disease can travel, number of travelers
- Not specifically about coronavirus, this activity introduces students to concepts of exponential growth in the context of bacteria – Bacterial Population Growth Lesson Plan
- Where Do New Viruses Come From? – a coronavirus-specific ten minute science video from Stated Clearly
- Exponential Growth and Epidemics – This 8 min video uses data on the reported cases of the coronavirus to give an overview of exponential growth. The video builds teachers background knowledge and has visuals you could show to HSE students, especially those studying exponential growth. One interesting section looks at a simplified formula for calculating growth and shows the dramatic impact reducing contact between people can have.
CORONAVIRUS & SOCIETY
- He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them – article about a man who bought up all the hand sanitizer he could, driving 1,300 miles all over Tennessee, to try and sell them for a large profit. (price gouging during a crisis, supply/demand, regulations)
Additional LESSON PLANS
- A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus – Developed by Teaching Tolerance
- Coronavirus student guide: Virus explainer and news updates (from PBS) – Video and discussion questions
- Teachable Moments from the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility
- What We Don’t Know Frightens Us: The Coronavirus & Scapegoating – This lesson provides factual information for students about the coronavirus aimed at preventing students from targeting classmates who are thought to be from China.
