After the start of the global pandemic, I’m sure everyone has felt overwhelmed by the presence of information on the new disease that’s been plaguing our everyday lives. Sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between what's factual or just a rumor. This information is especially hard to digest for younger children. In general, different news articles can provide different information that might be misleading to the public, especially young children. Because of the lack of easy-to-understand information about COVID 19 for children, our organization, Medical Matriarchs, decided to create a new way of teaching basic COVID facts and protocols. Our research was designed by creating a pre-test and post-test, given to four classes of 5th graders. We created twelve, admittedly challenging, questions about the facts and science between vaccines and viruses, including the new COVID virus. Each class received the question sheet at the beginning of class and we waited until each student finished answering the questions to collect. After collection, we spent roughly 25 minutes teaching the class about how vaccines are created by scientists and about the vaccines used to fight against COVID. We also gave the class a rundown of how they can protect themselves and others against the COVID virus and tried to debunk any myths they may have heard in the media. After our presentation was completed, we handed the class the same twelve questions on COVID and viruses and gave them sufficient time to complete the questions. We were hoping to see how our presentation affected their knowledge of basic COVID facts and the science behind viruses and vaccines. 

We found that most of the students knew little of the questions on the pre-test. All four of the classes averaged about a 5 out of 12 on the pre-test. Our pre-test questions are linked at the bottom of this article. There seemed to be no pattern of which questions were the most confusing to the students before our presentation and based on the scores, it is likely many of the students guessed on their pre-test. However, students did significantly better on the post-test, averaging a 10 out of twelve. The average increased by 99.976%. We found that harder concepts, such as how technology has developed recently to improve vaccinations were more commonly missed in comparison to questions related to COVID symptoms, such as blood clots, fever, insomnia, or others. We found that per class, the averages stayed almost exactly the same for the post-test, with the range being 0.6 missed questions. However, even with the slight difference, the class that had the lowest average in points correct on the posttest was also the least interactive. The first class we presented to was at 7:30 in the morning while the rest of the classes were later on in the afternoon. We believe it possible that the more awake and interactive classes were able to comprehend more material because of their willingness to ask questions and interact. 

The information, although complicated, is vital to know during our global pandemic. Our first slide went over how viruses reproduce and spread from person to person while our second slide talked about how vaccines were created and are developing to fight against different types of viruses. Later, we talked more specifically about the coronavirus and how symptoms may appear. We explained the true symptoms and risks of COVID, including how the sickness may cause blood clots, while also debunking myths such as the lie that humans and dogs can easily pass COVID amongst each other. After going over basic scientific facts, we talked to the 5th graders about what protocols they could take to protect against COVID. These protocols included wearing a mask, staying six feet apart from others, getting vaccinated, and disinfecting surfaces. At the end of our presentation, we went into detail about the different vaccine companies that currently exist in the United States and which ones would be available to them. During our presentation, we would often take breaks to answer questions different students had-- and each class had many questions. 

Our major fear when going into this endeavor was being faced with a class full of sleepy 11-year-olds who didn’t want to hear what we had to say. However, what we faced was the opposite. When teaching, we found ourselves face to face with many curious children who wanted to know more about science and the viruses that affect our world right now. In fact, we had to commonly repeat the phrase, “save the rest of your questions for the end”, during our presentation out of worry we wouldn’t have enough time to relay all of the information and protocols. Whether it be about COVID testing or the origins of the virus itself, many students seemed to be interested in what we had to teach them. And although we weren’t able to conduct a study on how our presentation affected the protocols they took in the long run, after revisiting the 5th graders to hand them back their graded papers, we noticed more masks and we even had children run up to tell us about how they got their first vaccine for COVID.