School › Vaccines
Vaccines
How a vaccine teaches the immune system to recognise a germ without the illness: antigens, antibodies, memory cells, doses and boosters, herd immunity and how smallpox was wiped out. Three ages, each with a text, an experiment, a game, a quiz, a printable worksheet and a teacher sheet.
Ages 6–7Vaccines: training our defendersHow a vaccine shows your body's defenders what a germ looks like, so they are ready, and how it helps protect other people too. With a lock-and-key matching experiment.Ages 10–11How vaccines workWhat is inside a vaccine, how it trains white blood cells to make antibodies and memory cells, why some vaccines need several doses, and how vaccinating many people protects everyone. With a herd immunity fair test.Ages 15–16Vaccination, immune memory and herd immunityActive and passive immunity, vaccine types, primary and secondary responses, boosters, the herd immunity threshold 1 − 1/R₀ and the history of smallpox eradication. With a random-number transmission model.