Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes

Part A: Starting A Discussion

15 minutes

Part B: Media Analysis

20 minutes

Part C: Creative Persuasion

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will...

understand the impact of smoking and tobacco use on the body, particularly the heart
explore the powerful role of the media in the promotion and prevention of smoking.

Students can...

conduct independent research on the effects of smoking on the body and, in particular, the heart
creatively apply their knowledge of persuasive media and the health effects of smoking to create an effective anti-smoking campaign.

Part A: Starting a discussion

Step 1

Write the word 'smoking' in the centre of a piece of butcher's paper or large piece of white paper. Invite students to do some word association, sharing their perceptions of, and interactions with, smoking and smokers. Allow students some time to come up with their own ideas.

You can then further prompt students' thinking by asking:

Would you consider smoking? Why or why not?
Do you think smoking is 'cool'? Why or why not?
If smoking is considered unhealthy, how is it bad for you? Do you understand the impact of smoking on the body?
Where do you see people smoking, if at all?
Do you regularly see smoking on TV, in movies or on social media?
Do you regularly see smokers in your daily lives? Do you know any smokers?
What is it like to be around someone while they smoke? How does this affect yourself?

Do any of these people talk about addiction? What do you think this means?

Keep track of students' thinking and the associated words on the piece of paper.

Step 2

Repeat this exercise, but now ask students to turn their mind towards the modern trend of vaping. Write 'vaping' in the centre of a second piece of paper. Allow students time to come up with their own ideas, before prompting students' thinking further by asking:

Is vaping considered 'unhealthy'? Why or why not?
Specifically, do you think vaping is 'cool'? Why or why not?
What do you think the appeal of vaping is?
Would you ever consider vaping? Why or why not? Suggestions might cover the potential peer pressure to conform to the trend, the perception that it isn't harmful to your health, or that it is 'fun' and enjoyable with many varying flavours.
Where do you see people vaping, if at all?
Have you seen anyone vaping on TV, in movies or on social media platforms like TikTok?? Who? Where?
What do you think about these people?
Do you regularly see people vaping in your daily lives? Do you know anyone who vapes?
What is it like to be around someone while they vape?

Encourage students to be open and honest with their responses. Remain genuinely curious as a teacher about students' thoughts and feelings on this sensitive topic. Try to avoid judging answers as right or wrong, expecting a specific answer, or lecturing students, as this is likely to make students unreceptive to the lessons and concerns you as an adult have around the health risks of smoking and vaping. Instead, present students with facts and challenging questions to guide their thinking, and allow them to come to their own conclusions.

Part B: Media analysis

Step 1

Facilitate a discussion:

Does the media (TV, movies, magazines, ads, TikToks,) have an impact on students' feelings about certain products? The connection does not need to be made to smoking right away. You could ask students to think about how they feel about fried chicken, soft drinks or certain toys, based on what they’ve seen or heard.
Do students think advertising affects the behaviours of themselves, their younger siblings or their parents? Why/why not?
How do students feel about the media being used in such a way to promote unhealthy products? Is it ethical to promote these products without showcasing the negative health impacts? Should the promotion of these products be regulated? How?

Step 2

Explain the following:

The fact is advertising does have a significant impact on us and our willingness to engage with products. It can be highly influential over the choice of food and toys we want to buy, and the places we want to go on holidays.
The advertising and promotion of smoking products has been banned in Australia since 1976.
However (to sidestep this ban), historically, media ‘influencers’ of the time were used as a vehicle to create positive associations with cigarettes and smoking for impressionable young audiences.
Cigarette manufacturers hope that when audiences see cool people in movies smoking, they will want to smoke themselves in order to also be cool, and will therefore buy cigarettes.

Of course, make it clear to students that these advertisements failed to mention the lethal consequences of smoking, including lung cancer and heart disease.

Step 3

Play this video:

Teens React to Cigarette Commercials (https://youtu.be/6ZeiLwHKlds)

Warning: This video contains bleeped swearing and conversations about smoking, vaping and `weed'. Consider carefully whether this is appropriate to show to your group of students.

Note: This video is quite long for this age group, but many students will find it engaging and watch the whole way through. If they start to fade out, make sure they have seen at least the first three minutes.

Step 4

Facilitate a discussion:

What was something that surprised you about the commercials?
What is something that you’re still wondering?
Why did one of the commercials feature doctors?

In this case, not only did the ads fail to mention the harmful effects of smoking, but they also included doctors smoking to make it seem like there were no harmful effects, because health professionals wouldn’t be smoking if they were bad for you. However, we now know this to be untrue.

Step 5

Ask students to think of some celebrities they admire or whose content they often engage with. Suggestions might include popular YouTubers, TikTokers or Instagrammers. Make a list of these on the board.

Discuss the effect it would have on students to see these people enjoying vaping on-stream, speaking positively about vaping, glamorising the different flavours and the act of vaping, and performing vaping smoke tricks? Do students think they would be interested in trying vaping if they saw their heroes trying it? What if their peers offered them a vape?

Remind students that they may not even be aware of the influence these media figures have on them.

Step 6

Explain to students that there is a concern that vaping could be promoted by influencers in the same way that tobacco companies used movie stars in the past.

Show students these images from the e-cigarette company Juul. Point out to students that Juul is just one brand of the hundreds of brands of e-cigarettes/vapes all trying to sell their product.

Step 7

Facilitate a discussion:

How are these ads trying to make you feel?
Suggested answer: They are trying to make Juul seem exciting and cool.
How are they doing this?
Suggested answers: What techniques are they using? There are lots of bright colours in an attempt to appeal to young people. They have included a cool, strong-looking guy (similar looking to pop star Harry Styles) and an attractive girl in fashionable clothing. The idea is that if you partake in a Juul, you will be just like these ‘cool’ individuals because they also smoke Juul. These are exactly the same tactics cigarette companies used 50 years ago!

Step 8

Play this video:

Fooled by JUUL | Vape Company Targeted Teens With Advertising (https://youtu.be/yIXvBsSbEb4)

Step 9

Invite students to recall what this young man said towards the end of the video and share with the class.

You can complete the discussion with the following:

He warns about the dangers of vaping, which are not mentioned anywhere in the Juul ads.
He says one Juul pod is equivalent to the nicotine in an entire pack of cigarettes. This can lead to a very serious addiction as nicotine is the very thing that makes cigarettes addictive.

You might like to explore more about nicotine using this site from the Alcohol and Drug Foundation: https://adf.org.au/drug-facts/nicotine/.

Step 10

Explain that there is some evidence that vaping is associated with later tobacco and cigarette use among teenagers (source).

Whilst vapes are relatively new products and the long-term safety and health effects associated with their use and exposure to second-hand vapour are unknown, the Australian Government warns that there is mounting evidence of a possible link between the use of e-cigarettes and lung disease, in a no less harmful way than the well-known impacts of traditional tobacco cigarette smoking (https://www.health.gov.au/news/e-cigarettes-linked-to-severe-lung-illness).

Step 11

Invite students to discuss the issue of vaping advertising and reflect on the video about Juul using these questions:

Who made this video and what is its purpose?
Do you think that e-cigarette and vape advertising is following the same path as regular cigarette advertising did decades ago?
What does this make you feel about advertising today?
Do you think advertising should be more strictly regulated? For example, would you ban the advertising of e-cigarettes or vaping based on what you are learning?

Part C: Creative persuasion

Step 1

Ask students to imagine themselves in the role of an anti-smoking campaigner, with the goal of reducing the rates of smoking amongst the nation’s population and/or preventing young people from taking up smoking.

Explain that they will be working independently to create an anti-smoking campaign. This could be a poster, a blueprint for an invention, a letter to the government/editor/parent, a television ad, or using any other medium students like. They need to support their campaign with factual information and incorporate many effective methods of persuasion, including convincing language they are familiar with and some of the media methods they have analysed earlier in this lesson.

You might like to review persuasive writing techniques, in particular, convincing language, and the power of supporting an argument with personal anecdotes as well as factual evidence.

Step 2

Independently, using the Student Worksheet, students conduct research into the effects of smoking on the body, in particular the heart. The following resources can also be found on the Student Worksheet.

First, direct students towards the following:

How do cigarettes affect the body? - Krishna Sudhir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y18Vz51Nkos)

Step 3

Next, students use this interactive website from the Quit organisation to investigate the impact of smoking on different parts of the body.

Step 4

Students can also read Smoking and your heart from the Heart Foundation and What are the effects of smoking and tobacco? from the Australian Government Department of Health.

Step 5

Now ask students to consider what they might say or do to get their parents to quit smoking, or to prevent their younger siblings from taking up smoking. What facts would they present to these people? What stories would they tell them? How would they present the information in an engaging and visually striking way? Make a list of persuasive points that could be used to convince people to quit smoking.

Step 6

Finally, students consider some creative methods of supporting people in quitting smoking. Encourage students to be imaginative. Some suggestions might include:

Writing a letter to the government to raise the price of cigarettes and tobacco to be ridiculously expensive
Inventing horrible tasting cigarettes or vape flavours
Using their understanding of lifestyle advertising to create an association between smoking and being uncool
An incentives system for people reducing or quitting smoking, such as a piece of chocolate as a reward for each day a person goes without smoking or a holiday money box where they save all the money they didn't spend on smoking
A poster detailing the effects of smoking on the body; they could start with this Poster Template.

Reflection

There are many other things that the media and influencers try to encourage us towards, such as soft drink, junk food and the latest mobile phone. How do students feel about these products? Are they considered not as bad as smoking or vaping, and therefore not as bad to be advertised to about?

Students could write an argumentative piece or debate on how to handle advertising for a particular product.

Differentiated learning

Extension - Students could conduct some research into the negative health effects of vaping and how they compare with smoking. They could start with this Australian Government information (https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/e-cigarettes-vaping). The reason this is an extension task is that there is much less information about the long-term effects of vaping compared to smoking as it is a relatively new technology.

Provisions for Learning Support - Students can use the interactive tool from the Quit organisation together with this Poster Template. Students label the diagram of the human body and copy the information about smoking's impact on those areas.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Jump Rope For Heart - Quitting Is Cooler

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