Fun Activities for Your School
Students have told us, and research shows, that just raising awareness about why smoking is dangerous does not decrease smoking rates. What does work is tackling this from a variety of directions, since one approach will not work for all students all the time. We've divided the activities into three categories so you can pick some from each section.
Keep it Fun!
Education & Awareness
Who said learning had to be boring? The activities below are a blast to participate in, and just as much fun to organize!
Tobacco-Free Theme Week
Kick-off with an assembly, invite a guest speaker, show videos at lunch, organize contests, a health fair with special speakers and displays. If the weather permits you could have a staff and student BBQ on the lawn outside. Use your imagination, the possibilities are endless!
Anti-tobacco Display
Create an anti-tobacco display in the school lobby area with posters, articles, announcements, news clippings and the effects of smoking. Develop a monthly calendar of activities. You could even rotate monthly themes: how the tobacco industry markets to youth, the cost of smoking, tobacco industry quotes, quit smoking tips, etc.
"What it Costs" Campaign or "The Cost of Smoking"
Hampton High had this idea: this year’s "What It Costs" campaign displays an all-terrain vehicle, a snowmobile and other luxury items, showing students what money spent on cigarettes might buy. Consider other fun themes such as a "What it Costs" campaign for vacations: put up posters from travel agencies that depict exotic locations students could vacation to with money saved after x number of weeks smoke-free. What other themes could your school do?
Set for Life...Smoke-free
This idea is inspired by the "Set for Life" lottery commercials on TV. Use posters or real 'stuff' to show students what a pack-a-day smoker could buy with one smoke-free week, with two smoke-free weeks, etc.
Example: Imagine what you could buy with the money you now spend on cigarettes...kick the nic for a week and cash in the savings for 3 new CD's, or stop smoking for 3 weeks and you could buy an ultra cool iPod! Ever dream of owning a wide screen TV? It's yours with the money you'd save after only 8 weeks smoke-free. * for a pack-a-day smoker paying the average of $8.50/pack
Take it to the Streets
Groups like yours all over North America are doing it...read all about it. Spread the Truth: Tobacco Kills Did you know that Tobacco Industry products kill about 129 Canadians every day (that's 1 person every 11 minutes)? Not many people know this...so get the word out around your school: tobacco kills more people than AIDS, car accidents, plane crashes, murders and suicides combined!!
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Body Outlines
Have a group of students use chalk to place body outlines on the sidewalk around your school. Do an outline to represent each person in your school who will die from tobacco products.
White-out Day
To give students and staff a visual idea of just how many Canadians are killed by tobacco each day, club members will "white people out". You start in the school office randomly picking 129 names from a student list. Then every hour through-out the day club members "white-out" a group of these students by painting a white X on their face and putting a sign around their neck saying: "My name is ____, and I died at [insert time]". Of course, your school might do a Black-out Day…and perhaps use black cloth armbands instead of face paint. Consider ending the day with an assembly and have all 'dead' students stand on stage.
1, 2, 3 Drop Dead
Recruit 129 students to stand on the stage during an assembly. Have them all drop to the ground at the count of 3 to visually demonstrate the number of Canadians killed by tobacco each day. To increase the visual impact, have each student hold a white handkerchief or sheet and cover themselves with it while lying on the stage. If you really want to make a statement take this demonstration to a local foodcourt or shopping mall and have the group of students "drop dead" while a few others hand out flyers stating the stats and what this demonstration represents.
Grim Reaper
To represent the 129 Canadians who die each day at the hands of tobacco products, blitz your city with black angels. Here's how: use black construction paper and cut of 129 grim reaper shapes. On the center of each image write the number "129". Go around your city with your advisor and leave these grim reapers in prominent places...shop windows and doors, hanging from light poles or trees, on park benches, etc. Follow this up with a media release explaining what "129" means.
Post-it Blitz
Leave a post-it on the window of every car in a parking lot...write a tobacco fact on the post-it. Some ideas: "Tobacco Industry products kill 47,000 Canadian every year. That's 6 times more than car accidents, murders, suicides and alcohol combined. - Statistics Canada", or "On 9-11 terrorists murdered 6000 people, tobacco industry products kill that many people every week in North America!"
Fair/Unfair
Follow the lead of students in Florida (SWAT: Students Working Against Tobacco)...stand outside a local fair (or your school's Health Fair) and hold 3 or 4 signs. The first sign says "FAIR" and has an arrow pointing towards the fair, the second sign beside it says "UNFAIR" and has an arrow pointing in the other direction to students holding a sign(s) with the death toll caused by tobacco: "Every Year Tobacco Industry Products Kill 1300 New Brunswickers". Have fun! |
Skeleton Display
In a prominent place at your school have a science department skeleton in a chair with a fake cigarette in its hand and a poster around its neck saying “Think twice when a smoker wants you to JOIN HIM”. This is a great prop to use at a health fair!
Show of Hands Banner
“Show of Hands, Our Lives Have Been Touched by Tobacco”. You will need canvas or another flexible, durable material for the banner; tempura paints in various colors and markers. Give participants the opportunity to leave handprints (or traced hands) on the canvas to demonstrate support for tobacco-control or in memory of someone they know who died of a tobacco related illness. Students may also write their thoughts or a message on the banner. Hang the banner in a prominent place at your school or in the community. This was a huge kit at Leo Hays High School!
Smokeless Tobacco Awareness Day
Whether you call it chew, snuff, the dip or plug, smokeless tobacco is just as dangerous and addictive as cigarettes. It is a tobacco product placed inside the mouth and left there to give a continuous dose of nicotine. Everyone at your school should know the real facts...so what could your group do to get the word out? An information table in the lobby or cafeteria? A smokeless tobacco trivia challenge? A post-it blitz with smokeless tobacco facts? Read more about smokeless tobacco and get the facts you'll need here.
Issue a Challenge
Most people love a challenge, especially when it includes a prize for the winner. Actually, just offering a prize can dramatically increase participation. It's true, ask any group of people a trivia question and note how many people raise their hand to respond, then ask another trivia question, but offer a prize for the correct answer...did more hands go up? Some anti-tobacco challenges: a tobacco trivia contest, challenge students to be tobacco-free for the day on May 31st (World Tobacco-Free Day), challenge students to quit smoking during January (tobacco reduction month), or have a poster contest.
Tobacco Trivia Contest
Minto High holds a smoking and tobacco trivia challenge with questions announced over the PA throughout the day. After each question, a representative from the class takes the class answer to the office and at the end of the challenge the homeroom with the most correct answers wins a prize.
Tobacco Facts
Read a tobacco fact over the PA every day for two weeks or a month, and have each homeroom write them down and submit all facts at the end of the contest. The homerooms that correctly wrote down all facts will have their names in a draw to win some cool prize. Paula Debouver, Healthy Learner Nurse with Minto and Chipman high advises a group that does this and she said the students, and even the teachers and principal, love it!
Poster Contest
Start a school-wide contest for the best anti-tobacco/anti-smoking poster, then display all posters in the halls around school or even in the community. Make sure all students are invited to participate, not just your art class! A similar activity could be done with comic strips or poems. Why not then write an article in the local newspaper about the contest, announcing the winner and showing some of the entries. Rothesay and Minto High are two schools that enjoy this activity.
Anti-tobacco Art Gallery
Turn your community into an anti-tobacco art gallery. Have your posters framed or laminated and request to display them in venues around the community for a month (such as stores and community centers). Submit an announcement to the local newspaper mentioning where the posters are located so residents can look for them when they are around town. Bonus: win businesses over by promising this free advertising.
Get the Word Out in Your Community
Have members of your club staff a tobacco information table at a local shopping center on Saturday.
Grade 9 Packages
Provide all incoming grade 9 students with an information pack on their first day. Brainstorm with your club members to determine what to include in the package. Some ideas: Canadian Cancer Society pamphlets (“What’s Your Poison?”, etc.), stickers, a memo from your club welcoming new students, information about your club and the fun activities it does throughout the year and who to contact if they want to be involved.
Skits
- have a student pose as a waiter and serve the poisons found in cigarettes or second-hand smoke to student in the class - a male student tries to flirt with female students but is rejected because he smells of cigarette smoke
Tobacco Resource Section in Library
Create a section of the library or other area of school that supplies pamphlets, articles and information for students to help them quit smoking, educate them on the dangers of smoking, help a friend quit smoking, information about what the school is doing and ways to become involved. Plus books and videos they can sign out.
Don't Forget 'Parent Teacher Night'
Offer a cessation/tobacco information table for parents: posters, brochures on quitting smoking and second-hand smoke, information on community services (smokers’ helpline, quit smoking programs, etc.). Don't forget to tell them what your school is doing!
Services & Support
So let's say you have tons of awareness activities at your school and a student decides they want to quit (Yay!)...but your school doesn't offer support to help that student :( . That would suck.
That's why 'services and support' are so vital. So here are some good ideas...
Quit Smoking Program
If your school doesn't already offer one your club should start by contacting the guidance counsellor and/or Healthy Learner Nurse and sell them on why this is so important. Check out our quit smoking pages for heaps of information on programs your guidance department could offer...and they don't require a degree in drug therapy!
Host a Health Fair or Seminar
Did you know that some smokers use smoking as a way to relieve stress? Others are afraid to quit because they might gain weight. So...bring in a dietician, nutritionist or yoga instructor to discuss healthy ways to relieve stress and/or healthy food choices. Many New Brunswick schools have done this.
Offer Smoking Alternatives
If you thought sitting through a 40 minute class as a non-smoker was tough...imagine what a smoking student, or a student trying to quit goes through as their body begs for nicotine! Talk to these student smokers and ask them what would help get them through...some ideas are sugar-free gum and candy, water, stress balls to squeeze.
Visit Feeder Schools
What middle school(s) do your grade 9's come from? Some student clubs like yours have realized that they can decrease the smoking rate at their school by decreasing the smoking rate at their feeder schools. So, they get together a group of high school students to go talk to middle school students about tobacco. The teachers love it and so do the students. We've put together an entire page full of ideas and tips: check it out!
Offer Incentive
Offer prizes and giveaways that motivate students to get involved: students who attend all health or smoking information sessions get their name in for a draw, students who successfully quit win some prize, etc.
Healthy Environments
Hey, do you want to know what else can you do to really upsize the effectiveness of your efforts? Your club can make sure there are lots of fun things for students to do during free time and cool spaces to hang out...smoke-free. Some students are so bored at noon that they go smoke because "there's nothing else to do". Eeek! Let's work on that...
The best way to find out what your fellow students would rather do during free time is to ask them. Talk to students and ask what your school could provide that they would enjoy, ask students in your quit smoking class what noon-time activities would keep them occupied and make it easier to resist the intense cravings for tobacco. A pool table, ping pong, a coffee lounge? Although you might not be able to provide students with exactly what they want, due to space or $$ shortages, you might discover something small that would make a big difference. Here are some more ideas...
Create Inviting Spaces for Noon
A music room with instruments available; a games/activity room with pool table, ping-pong, arcade, couches, TV, movies; a coffee house; keep the gym open during lunch, etc. You may need to have a school fundraiser to raise money to purchase some of these items.
Organize Fun Activities for Noon
Art and woodworking classes, variety shows, clubs, sports, art class; keep the school gym open with supervision allowing students to play basketball, floor hockey, volleyball, etc.
Create a Smoke-free Area Outdoors
Such as: a courtyard outside the school with picnic tables, benches, trees, flowers, grass, shrubs, volleyball net, beautiful mural, music, canopy. Celebrate the opening with a BBQ, music, and staff vs. student volleyball game. Have the shop class build a picnic table or bench and the art class paint a mural. When asked about vandalism concerns one high school replied: “the kids made the bench so the kids don’t destroy it”. Allow fellow students to plant a tree/flowers/shrub in memory of someone they know who died from cancer or to represent someone they know who quit smoking.
Cigarette Butt Clean Up
Has a cool area of your community become littered with cigarette butts? Organize a cleanup...find out more.
Celebrate Your Success
Celebrate your success at the end of the year with an assembly, BBQ, etc. Tell students what the school and your club have accomplished, what happened, how many participated and thank everyone who helped.
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