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!

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

 

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