COVID-19 & Health Equity Units

How can people help end pandemics? Educators and students across the country are investigating important questions like this in the classroom (in-person and online!) while navigating COVID-19 in their own daily lives.

BSCS Science Learning created free units on COVID-19 & Health Equity for middle and high school. In these units, teachers and students work together to make sense of the pandemic and how it disproportionately affects underserved communities by engaging in science inquiry and social and emotional learning.

BSCS worked closely with OpenSciEd  and experts to develop the multidisciplinary middle and high school units. OpenSciEd distributes these units along with units for grades K–5.

High School Science Unit

The high school unit focuses on the question, “What can we learn from the spread of the COVID-19 virus to protect our communities? ” It is designed to teach students about the COVID-19 pandemic, transmission of the COVID-19 virus, and the impacts of the pandemic on communities, especially communities of color.

The unit employs an inquiry-based approach, and is designed for 14 class periods of instruction, with several optional extensions. There are four broad areas of learning goals targeted in this unit:

• virus transmission between people and communities,
• mitigation strategies and using probabilities to explain how we can lower the chance of transmitting the virus between people and across communities,
• understanding disproportionate impacts on communities and the policies and practices that lead to those impacts, and finally,
• development of two social emotional competencies—self awareness and social awareness.

The high school science unit was developed in a partnership between BSCS Science Learning and current classroom teachers from across the country. Epidemiologists, public health experts, equity and antiracist education experts, community groups, as well as social-emotional learning experts contributed to the material development.

Middle School Science Unit

The middle school unit focuses on the question, “How can people help end pandemics?” It is designed to teach students about the COVID-19 pandemic, transmission of the COVID-19 virus, and the impacts of the pandemic on communities.

The unit employs an inquiry-based approach and is designed for 15 class periods of instruction, with optional extensions. Students will study the COVID-19 pandemic in light of historical pandemics to develop two social emotional competencies, self awareness and social awareness, and to build an understanding of the following key concepts:

• how the COVID-19 virus spreads from person to person and through communities,
• how strategies to reduce transmission of COVID-19 work, and
• how the actions of individuals can help to end pandemics.

The middle school science unit was developed in a partnership between BSCS Science Learning and current classroom teachers from across the country. Epidemiologists, public health experts, equity and antiracist education experts, community groups, as well as social-emotional learning experts contributed to the material development.

Funding for the COVID-19 & Health Equity Units was provided by a generous donor, who prefers to remain anonymous.