Health campaigns - sexual health


Year level: 10

Description

Students explore the purpose of health campaigns and identify the components of a successful campaign. In groups, they develop their own campaign with a sexual health theme.

Learning focus

Students will develop an understanding of what a health campaign is and how these may influence attitudes, promote healthy behaviours and increase connection to the community.

Key understandings

  • Health literacy is having the knowledge to find, understand and use information about our own health and health care from sources such as health websites to make healthier and safer decisions.

Materials

  • Student Activity Sheet: KWL – Health campaigns [one per student]
  • Student Activity Sheet: Health campaign case studies [one per pair]
  • Teaching Resource: Health campaign topics PowerPoint slides [one per student/group]
  • Student Activity Sheet: Health campaign plan [one per student/group]
  • Student Activity Sheet: Campaign evaluation [one per student/group]

Australian curriculum

General capabilities

No General Capabilities values have been selected.

Health and physical education(P)

Personal, social and community health

This strand will develop students' knowledge, understanding and skills to support a positive sense of self, to effectively respond to life events and transitions and to engage in their learning. Effective communication, decision-making and goal-setting skills are integral to this strand as they help to establish and maintain relationships in family, school, peer group and community settings, support healthy and safer behaviours, and enable advocacy. Students will source and examine a range of health information, products, services and policies, and evaluate their impact on individual and community health and safety.

Blooms revised taxonomy

No Blooms values have been selected.

Inquiry learning phase

No Inquiry Learning phase values have been selected.

Related items

Teaching resource (download)

Before you get started

  • This is a recommended 4-6 week unit of work. Students will require access to the internet. Prior to starting the unit, check websites and associated campaigns are accessible on school networks.

  • Teachers need to understand the concept of health promotion to facilitate the delivery of this learning activity.

The World Health Organization defines health promotion as

“…the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions”.1 

Health promotion interventions include policy development; legislation and regulation; re-orienting health services; community development; creating healthy environments; and raising public awareness and engagement through health campaigns. This learning activity focuses on the impact of health campaigns on changing health behaviours through the use of mass media, social media and/or community events.  

1 World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/topics/health_promotion/en/ Retrieved 18/9/2015

Learning activities

Whole Class

Students explore their understanding of health campaigns and determine what they need to know in order to develop a health campaign of their own.

  1. Give each student a copy of the Student Activity Sheet: KWL – Health campaigns. Allow 5 minutes for each student to complete the ‘What I know’ about health campaigns section individually. Discuss student answers as a class.

  2. Explain to the class what a health campaign is:

A health campaign aims to raise awareness and understanding of a health issue, and often aims to change people’s health behaviours. This can be done in a number of ways including mass media, social media and community events.

  1. Allow 2 minutes for each student to complete the ‘What I want to know’ section of the KWL chart. Discuss student answers as a class.

Note: Students will complete the 'What I have learnt' section at the end of this unit of work so should be encouraged to keep in a place easy to find later.

Independent or Small Group

Access to a computer lab and internet will be required for this activity as students will investigate case studies of local and national health campaigns. They will then develop a health campaign of their own on one of five sexual health and/or relationships topics: Growing Bodies; Respectful Relationships; Staying Safe; Emotional Wellbeing and/or Diversity.

  1. Students form a pair or group of three. Provide each pair/group with one of the case studies from the Student Activity Sheet: Health campaign case studies. 

    • Ask the students to visit the campaign website and familiarise themselves with the campaign. They then complete the activity sheet by identifying the target group; the positives, negatives and issues of the campaign; and if the campaign worked.

    • All students who worked on the same campaign are then joined together in a larger group to discuss their results. Each group then nominates a spokesperson to present their findings to the class.

  1. Explain to students that they will be developing their own health campaign on a sexual health and/or relationship topic of their choice. This can be done individually, in pairs, or in small groups.

    • Display the Teaching Resource: Health campaign topics PowerPoint slides. Discuss ideas for health campaigns that can be developed for each of the topic areas. Explain that students will need to decide on a topic area and then a subject for their health campaign.

    • Distribute the Student Activity Sheet: Health campaign plan to each student or group. Explain each section of the activity sheet.

    • Each student/group has 4-6 weeks to research and develop their health campaign.

Reflection

  1. Students present their health campaign to the class or to others (e.g. peers, parents, school or other community members).

    • Seek feedback from the audience as to how effective they thought your campaign was using a Rating Scale: use Student Activity Sheet: Campaign evaluation (students may decide to design and use their own format to seek feedback).

  1. Students complete the 'What I have Learnt' section of their KWL chart to describe what they have learnt from this activity.

 

External related resources

The practical guide to love, sex and relationships 

A teaching resource from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University.

Topic 8: Authenticating online information

  • Accessing and evaluating information on sexual health and relationships online.