In this lesson, third-grade students learn how to recognize healthy and unhealthy behaviors, as well as the process of decision-making for their health. They also explore the concept of setting health goals and how substances like drugs and alcohol can impact these goals. To deepen understanding, students engage in activities and discussions about how substance use disorder can affect their brains and overall health, and they brainstorm ways to naturally boost their mood and stay healthy. They conclude by reflecting on how they will work to keep their brain healthy and safe.
Begin by starting the Emily’s Hope timer for the drug overdose deaths to reference for this lesson. Your students will hear a chime sound every 5 minutes. Explain to them that with nearly 300 drug overdose deaths a day in the United States, someone is losing their life to drugs every 5 minutes. When they hear the sound, another person has died from drugs.
Review and Introduce:
Ask:
- What have you learned about medications/ medicine?
- What are some terms you have heard for when someone uses drugs/medications?
Introduce the vocabulary word substance use disorder. A substance use disorder is a strong desire to use these substances, and pretty soon, the drugs or alcohol take over the brain and become more important than anything else in their life.
Teacher Note
The clinical definition is:
Substance use disorder: occurs when the recurrent use of alcohol and/or drugs causes clinically significant impairment, including health problems, disability, and failure to meet major responsibilities at work, school, or home.
Watch the animation for lesson 6 one time through. Then, rewatch and pause to discuss.
- Pause after 1:08, “It’s just not worth the bad tummy ache you can get!” and ask: Have you ever experienced a similar situation? Have you eaten too much of something good tasting and gotten sick? Explain how you felt before, during, and after eating you ate too much of something good.
- Pause after 2:52, “It makes people do silly or bad things and hurts their bodies, their family and their friends” and ask: How do substances affect the brain?
Read Chapter 6 (pages 42-47) in the book, Keep Your Body and Brain Healthy and Safe.
After reading,
Ask:
- How do substances trick the brain?
- What might the brain stop doing when someone is taking illegal drugs?
Activity:
Discuss tolerance through the use of an analogy. Choose which one fits your students best.
- How many of your parents have a phone? Do they have an old phone that they need to plug into the wall or a cell phone? Once your parents have a cell phone, do they keep it forever because it continues working, or do they want to upgrade to the newest/best version as soon as it is released?
- Have you ever been running around outside on a hot day and felt thirsty? Then you took a sip of really cold refreshing water, and it felt so good. Or have you been so tired you just couldn’t hold your head up anymore, and then you finally put your head on the pillow, and you felt so good? Our brains are designed to reinforce these things that are good for our survival, so they reward us when we do these things by making us feel great. When someone develops an addiction, however, those things that used to make them feel good no longer compare to how they feel when they’re using a drug.
Lead your class in a discussion by speaking of how building a tolerance inhibits the brain from experiencing emotions in certain ways.
Tolerance impedes brain function and could cause you to lose interest in things.
Introduce the words serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin– these chemicals are already present in the brain.
Did you know that you can increase these chemicals in your brain without the use of harmful substances?
Give examples:
- Serotonin – riding a bike, walking outside, running, enjoying some safe sun rays, swimming
- Dopamine – completing a task, self-care, eating food, celebrating small victories
- Endorphins – laughing, eating dark chocolate, exercising
- Oxytocin – petting an animal. Playing with a child, holding hands, massage therapy, hugs, and giving a compliment.
Have students identify ways they can increase these “feel-good” chemicals (sports, playing an instrument, acting in a school play, setting a career goal, etc.).
Brain Chemicals Worksheet
Discuss with students how substance use can affect their brains so much that they might be unable to accomplish these goals.
Reflection/Looking Ahead
Exit ticket: How will you work to keep your brain healthy and safe?
Exit ticket: How will you work to keep your brain healthy and safe?
Play the song and display words for students to follow along.
Additional Resources
If a student feels uncomfortable with the information from this lesson, make sure they are referred to the school counselor
What are some of the terms — you might have already heard “Hooked on drugs,” “addicted”
We will refer to these as substance use disorders. — talk about how it affects people’s lives on a continuum.
Substance use disorder: Substance use disorders occur when the recurrent use of alcohol and/or drugs causes clinically significant impairment, including health problems, disability, and failure to meet major responsibilities at work, school, or home
Tolerance: Your body can become used to many things. For example, your body can become used to running. At first, a long run may make you tired, But if you run every day, your body will become used to running, and gradually, you won’t get as tired. Something like that happens when people take a drug. Any drug. At first, a small amount of the drug has a strong effect. But gradually, the body becomes used to the drug. Then it takes more and more of the drug to have the same effect on you. We call this building up a tolerance to a drug.
Tolerance to drugs is a serious problem. It leads people to want more and more of the drug. Large doses of any drug may harm the body. Tolerance impedes brain function and could cause you to lose interest in things.
Activity Support:
Choose which analogy works best for your classroom
- How many of your parents have a phone? Do they have an old phone that they need to plug into the wall or a cell phone? Once your parents have a cell phone, do they keep it forever because it continues working, or do they want to upgrade to the newest/best version as soon as it is released?
Visually represent that the tolerance level continues to increase through the use of photographs such as the following:
iPhone Series 1
iPhone Series 14
- You get a scooter. It is super fun, and you figure out how to go really fast! Instead of walking to school with your friends (which you love to do), you decide to ride your scooter. So you continue to scooter to school all by yourself. Now you begin to get bored with your scooter because you want to go faster. You learn about a faster scooter, so you ask for one for your upcoming birthday. You love going super fast, and you ride all over, perfecting your speed and ticks.
One day you accidentally sleep in later than you normally do in the morning, and you’re running late for school. You know it will take you 10 minutes to get to school, and your scooter isn’t fast enough, so you beg your parents for a scooter with a motor. You get one, and it goes super fast. You ride it everywhere! You ride it to school, and now it only takes you 5 minutes to ride to school. You ride it every day, as much as you can. Sometimes though, you forget to do your chores at home because you are out on your scooter. Your parents get worried because sometimes you show up late. Sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning because you know you can get to school in 5 minutes. After a while, you don’t even think your scooter is great anymore, even though no one in your class has a scooter with a motor. Then one morning, the scooter motor dies, and you now have to walk to school. You used to love to walk to school, but you cannot bear to walk all that way. You creep back to your bedroom and jump into bed because you can’t bear to walk. You cannot bear to walk to school.
You have completely forgotten that you used to love walking to school with your friends.
In this analogy, nothing has changed, but you became immune or used to the effect of riding super fast to school. - Have you ever been running around outside on a hot day and felt thirsty? Then you took a sip of really cold refreshing water, and it felt so good. Or have you been so tired that you just couldn’t hold your head up anymore, and when you finally put your head on the pillow and you felt so good? Our brains are designed to reinforce these things that are good for our survival, so they reward us when we do these things by making us feel great. When someone develops an addiction, however, those things that used to make them feel good no longer compare to how they feel when they’re using a drug.
Article on “How To Talk To Your Kids About Addiction” → https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-talk-to-your-kids-about-addiction_n_5b966679e4b0cf7b0041db8e
Lead your class in a discussion by speaking of how building a tolerance inhibits the brain from experiencing emotions in certain ways.