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Infectious Disease Dart Game

Image from New Jersey Mosquito Site
http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/disease.htm

NATIONAL STANDARDS: OBJECTIVE:
The objective of this game is to give students the opportunity to understand vectors in relation to carrying infectious diseases. The dart itself represents the vector and the color is coded for the pathogen injected into the person by the vector. The student attempts to make as few points as possible so the one player with the least amount of points wins. Recommended number of  trails is five. Each player tosses each dart one time each trial, so each player will toss a total of 15 times in a complete game.

TARGET (Board) Get standard size bulletin board and line with blue felt. Have students cut out of dark green felt a pattern of  North America, Central America and South America. Place land masses (green felt) on the bulletin board in appropriate place. The land masses should take up most of the bulletin board. Have students research population and precipitation and place round black dots where population is the most dense. This will be a one time investigation. After this the game target board is ready to be used in the game.

Recommended TOSS LINE for high school students is 2 and 1/2 meters.

After each turn the player tells why or why not he/she scored points. The REASON BANK is below. The players read the appropriate reason as to the scoring of each point. This is read after each trial, 3 dart tosses.

DARTS (represents vector)
COLOR (type of vector i.e. insect, mosquito, mouse carrying pathogen)

green - mosquito carrying pathogen that is infected with  (pathogen causing Dengue Fever)

yellow - mosquito carrying pathogen that is infected with Aedes aegypte (pathogen causing malaria)

brown - deer mouse carrying (pathogen causing Hanta Virus)

REASON BANK

  1. 0 points

    2. sparsely populated region
    dry, cool climate
  2. 20 points

    3. densely populated region
    dry, cool climate
  3. 30 points

    4. sparsely populated region
    wet climate
  4. 50 points

    5. densely populated region
    wet climate
    educated as to keeping environment clean and free from stagnant wate
  5. 60 points

    6. densely populated region
    wet climate
    Uneducated as to keeping environment clean and free from stagnant water
ASSESSMENT:
Teacher can designate 10 points on the board and student tells point value and gives reason for that value. Ten  points for correct answer giving a total of 100 points; 20 designated places on the map valued at 5 points for each correct reason giving a total of 100 points. 
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