Tobacco and Your Health

This is a lesson plan for a unit on the effects of using tobacco. Included in this lesson plan is a Problem-Based Learning driving question, an attention grabber involving a fun role play activity, and a culminating activity that will excite your students every step of the way. This lesson was created to fulfill the first 1st grade standard of Health and Wellness in the state of Indiana.

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Driving Question: How can being tobacco free lead to a healthy lifestyle?  

Grabber: Introduce the idea of tobacco use and its dangers by having two students, who were secretly picked out from the class, perform a skit that introduces the dangers of tobacco. These students will be playing with each other, and just having a good time, when one of the students pulls out a candy cigarette, the kind that you get of halloween sometimes. This one kid pretends as if he or she is smoking and they think that it is funny. The other child acts concerned and doesn’t really laugh… After the one kid who is fake smoking realizes that his friend isn’t laughing, he asks him what’s wrong. The troubled kid says “Do you not realize how tobacco and smoking hurts you?” The students are then done with their skit, and the lesson will begin.

Culminating Activity: First, students will be assigned into groups, typically just the students at their table that they sit at. The students will use the class set of computers to research the topic of tobacco and the dangers of using it. Then, the students will be given a giant piece of paper. They will lay on the paper and have a classmate trace their body. After they trace their body they will draw in each of the organs and body parts that are affected by tobacco usage in a negative way. This way they can see what tobacco does to their own body in a more visual way. They will be able to visualize how tobacco negatively affects their heart, eyes, lungs, blood, private parts, skin, teeth, moods, hair scent, and much more. After the students finish their diagrams of their bodies, they will present them to their classmates. They will stand in front of the class with their group and each group member's body hanging on the board. From there, they can tell the rest of the class the information that they found out about tobacco use and how to avoid using it in order to live a healthier lifestyle. They will explain to their classmates that by avoiding tobacco use, they will save each of these parts of their body, and will not struggle with all of these things that their paper body is struggling with.

This is the rubric for the whole activity.