CLIL teacher’s notes
History and medicine
LESSON OBJECTIVE In this lesson, students focus on the history of the vaccine and the impact it has had through
recent centuries.
LANGUAGE Unit 5: farmers; modal verbs of speculation and deduction
REFERENCE Unit 6: have an injection, feel under the weather; Third conditional
WARMER
Write the major infectious diseases mentioned in
the text on the board (smallpox, cowpox, rabies,
tetanus, diphtheria) and translate them if necessary.
5 These are open questions to which the students can
Find out what the students know about them. Do
they still exist and, if so, how can they be prevented?
Elicit the idea of vaccination and any further diseases
prevented by immunisation (e.g. influenza, mumps,
measles, whooping cough, meningitis, hepatitis). Add
these to the board. Explain that they are going to
read a text about the history of the vaccine. Ask if
they can remember the last vaccination they had and
how they felt about it.
1 Ask the students if they know when the concept of
vaccination was first discovered. Collect their ideas
on the board. Don’t confirm answers yet. Explain that
students will find the answer in the text.
2 Draw the students’ attention to the photos and, in pairs,
ask them to guess who Edward Jenner was. Tell the
students to read the text quickly and find the answer to
the questions in 1 and 2.
Answer
1 The vaccination as we recognise it today was invented
in 1796 by Edward Jenner. However, the concept of
immunity to disease was first observed in Ancient
Greece in 429 BC, and practised by the Chinese in
900 AD.
2 Jenner was a British doctor who discovered
vaccination as we know it today.
Before reading the text again, remind students of the
diseases they learned in the Warmer, and go through
the words in the Vocabulary focus box. Ask students to
find them in the text and pre-teach some of the more
complex words if necessary.
3 Students read the text again in detail and fill in the
missing information in the timeline.
Answers
1 429 BC
2 The Chinese discovered variolation, the first basic
form of vaccination.
3 British doctor, Edward Jenner, discovered vaccination
as we know it today.
4 The 19th century
5 The WHO declared that smallpox was officially eradicated.
4 Students choose the correct alternative.
This page has been downloaded from www.macmillangateway2.com
Photocopiable © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2016
B2 Units
Answers
1 controversial  2 diseased  3 cowpox  4 rabies
5 1890s
give their own supported answers. Ask them to justify
their answers to the class. In larger classes, divide the
students into groups to discuss their opinions. The
second question is hypothetical and aims to practise
the third conditional. Elicit the sentence starter: If the
vaccine had never been invented … and write it on the
board. In small groups, ask the students to discuss a
world without vaccines using the sentence starter as a
prompt. You may like to go through the Did you know?
box before answering this question. Nominate students
to give feedback.
?
? DID YOU KNOW?
?
Direct the students to the Did you know? box. Read
?
through the information on community or ‘herd’
immunity. Explain that ‘herd’ is a collective noun
for a group of cows. Ask the students to think of a
synonym for contagious (infectious). You may like to
focus on this box before doing 5.
PROJECT
1 If possible, show the class photos of the main
historical figures from the text. Either let the students
choose or divide the class into groups and give them
one of the men to research.
2 Tell them to imagine they are journalists from the
time of their chosen person. They are going to
write a newspaper article telling everyone about the
breakthrough discovery. They must find out more about
the scientist and collect lots of interesting information
about their scientific discovery. They should also
imagine how people reacted, both positively and
negatively, and include photos and made up quotes.
3 Pairs prepare their newspaper articles. Allow some
class time for research and writing. If possible, use
computers to make the newspaper article layout
look authentic. You could display their writing on the
classroom walls.
1 of 1