Drug and Alcohol Awareness Lesson: Understanding Addiction

In this lesson, students will raise their awareness of drug and alcohol addiction. There is a link to a great article called Understanding Addiction that is for a group to take parts of the article and read, then share out-this is called Jigsaw reading. There are links to 2 really engaging videos, one is an animated video about the effects of addiction. The other one explains the swiss cheese theory. Links to the videos are embedded in the pictures on the slides. When the PPT is in slideshow mode, you will be redirected to the video. The link for the article is in the slide notes on slide 4. The other links are embedded in slide 2 and 6. The Powerpoint will guide your lesson. This is very low prep. You can print out the article for each group or have students access the article online. The article covers the difference between substance abuse and addiction, what is physical addiction, what is psychological addiction, signs of addiction, helping someone you know who may be addicted and the steps for recovering from addiction. This is best for Grades 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. As a Physical education teacher, health teacher, school counsellor or other type of health and wellness teacher, this lesson will be an engaging one for your students. The Powerpoint begins with the video called "Nuggets" and after there are discussion questions you can pose to partners, groups or whole class. The next activity is reading the article and dividing the article points among group members. Then the whole class can unpack the key aspects of the article. The next activity is a video on the Swiss Cheese Analogy in which students will learn about different risk factors for becoming addicted.

If you are interested in other products about drugs and alcohol awareness, please check out this product: https://teachsimple.com/product/vaping-and-peer-pressure-sel-lesson (This is about vaping and peer pressure).