One of five Queen's Health Outreach peer-lead health education initiatives around the world
Monday, 11 February 2013
Hey Everyone!
My name is Bethany and I am a proud peer educator for a grade 4/5 class at Rideau Public School! Afterour first lesson we decided the students would benefit from splitting up the grades in order to satisfytheir grade requirements more effectively. This smaller student-to-teacher ratio has made the lessonsso valuable because we get to know each of the children we teach. I am teaching the grade 4s andwe have been working hard to learn all the harmful effects of smoking. Last week we discussed howsmoking companies persuade youth to buy cigarettes. By examining numerous smoking advertisements we concluded no matter what they say, SMOKING IS NOT COOL! The students are so eager to show how much they know about smoking that they worked in groups to produce wonderful anti-smoking posters. These posters will be completed this week and will be posted up in the hallways of Rideau Elementary School. This week we will be practising how to say NO, with different role playing activities. This class isfull of leaders, and are excited to teach others about everything they know about leading a healthy life. One student promised to not include any scenes of smoking in his future movie producing career, haha! While another promised to discourage his little siblings from smoking. I look forward to spending time with this vibrant class every week and can’t wait to see how they respond to the next lessons with me!!
My name is Emily and I am a Peer Educator with Bethany in a grade 4/5 class at Rideau Public School. I just joined the project about a month ago and I'm so happy to already have the opportunity to meet students. Currently, I have been teaching the small group of grade 5's in the the class about alcohol. It's been really great to get to know all of the kids well. Last week we talked about the effects of alcohol on the body. The kids got to experience how alcohol can make people lose control of their actions by wearing some homemade "drunk goggles" and trying to do some normally easy tasks while they were dizzy or had impaired vision. We also played a matching game where the students categorized the effects of alcohol into "long term", "short term" or "both" and talked about what all of the effects meant. This week, we learned about why some people choose to drink, and how we can safely and assertively decline alcohol if someone is offering it to us. The students acted out different scenarios where they were being pressured to drink alcohol but successfully declined. These lessons were the first introduction the students had to this topic and they were really involved in learning about it and were really keen to show the different ways they could turn down drinking. Next week we're bringing the grades back together to start their introduction to puberty; stay tuned for updates !!
Hi guys!
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Hello There!
Welcome
to our first blog post from Central 4/5! Our names are Alison and Liora and
we've been working with the great kids of a Central Public School 4/5 classroom since October. Topics we
have already covered with the kids are nutrition and hygiene. For teaching about
nutrition, we focused in on healthy foods vs. ‘sometimes’ foods and portion
control. As an activity, the kids drew their favourite healthy meals on paper
plates and we all took turns presenting! The classes that we taught hygiene
were related to puberty. One fun activity that we did with the kids was when we
talked about the importance of washing hands! The kids wore rudder gloves and
we gave them a dab of paint, which we all pretended was soap! The kids then
pretended to wash their hands, covering their whole hands with the paint! They
were amazed at how hard it is to cover both hands with 'soap'!
The
kids always have amazing questions, and whatever we do not have time to answer
in class, we let the kids write their questions in an anonymous question box
and we answer all of their questions at the beginning of the following class.
In
the next few weeks we are excited to be teaching the kids about a topic that
they have not been taught in school yet- smoking cessation and tobacco! Topics
that we will cover include second-hand smoking, ingredients in a cigarette, and
addictive properties.
Goodbye
for now!
Alison
& Liora
Friday, 1 February 2013
Limestone Continuing Education
Hello everyone!
My name is Julia
and I am a M.Sc Genetics candidate and my co-writer Paul is a fourth year
health major, both at Queen’s University. We are peer educators for Limestone
Community Education Centre, a place where people of all ages and abilities can
earn their secondary school diplomas and other life skills.
Our lessons are
focused on health education for adults and tips for improving the quality of
one’s life. Because health encompasses many different topics, we mainly focus
on nutrition, mental and sexual health. Our style of teaching is more
discussion-based than lecture-based because we find it more effective for
adults to contribute their ideas and brainstorm. This also allows us to gauge
where there may be gaps in their health education background, so we can strive
to fill in those gaps in future lessons. This past week we taught the power of
positive thinking, and we had a good response from the class. Some sub-topics
included the health benefits of positive thinking and how to think in a more
positive way.
The health
benefits of positive thinking
Researchers
continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on
health.
- Increased
life span
- Lower
rates of depression
- Lower
levels of distress
- Greater
resistance to the common cold
- Better
psychological and physical well-being
- Reduced
risk of death from cardiovascular disease
- Better
coping skills during hardships and times of stress
How to behave in a more positive and
optimistic way:
- Identify
areas to change.
- Check
yourself periodically during the day.
- Be open to
humor.
- Follow a
healthy lifestyle.
- Surround
yourself with positive people.
- Practice
positive self-talk.
Next lesson we
plan on diving a bit deeper into mental health and overcoming stigmas
associated with mental health disorders.
Smile at
yourself today J
Until next time,
Julia and
Paul
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)