Daily tracking of swine flu is a great way to incorporate social studies into a math lesson while fostering cooperative learning. Have students conduct research on internet news sites like cnn.com or nytimes.com to find daily numbers of confirmed cases. Time plot charts are perfect for comparing/contrasting outbreak densities. New values can be added as information gets updated.
Critical thinking prompts:
1) Are there any trends?
2) Can subsequent outbreaks be predicted?
3) Why haven’t many places been impacted by swine flu (yet)?
Enrichment:
Compare daily GSK, Roche stock prices to swine flu outbreak metrics.
The idea behind this lesson is that students will be able to come up with plausible answers to the questions, not necessarily right or wrong answers. Evidence for their argument can be provided from the charts they create, news that they read (with citation), and information exchanged with other students. As for a time frame, data can be plotted for homework and at the end of each week group think may initiate inquiry based learning.
