Print the student guide to Planning School Awareness Campaign. This webquest will follow the steps in the guide but you will also be referring to tobacco-related information in the process steps below.

1. Investigate the Health Problem of Tobacco Use


Everyone in your group should start by reading the facts and doing the web-based activities on smoking and tobacco for the following web pages. Use Section 3.2 of your Personal Health Journal to record your observations and reactions to the information. (Keep notes on the arguments, facts and examples to use in your awareness campaign.)


• The Scoop (Health Canada)
• Cigarettes Inside Out (Health Canada)
• What is it about Smoking That It Is So Harmful? (Canadian Health Network)
• What Am I Inhaling?> (Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada)
• The Real Cost $$$ (Health Canada)
• It'll Never Happen To Me (Health Canada)

Next, each member of the group will examine their own risk by reading the following articles, especially the ones about second-hand smoke.



• Are You an Addict? (Health Canada)
• Passive smoking - Nowhere to Hide
• Children Especially Vulnerable to the Effects of Second-Hand Smoke (Canadian Health Network)

To finish the assigned reading take the Health Canada tobacco knowledge quiz Get Skillz and record your score.

Working as a group, sort out the long-term health risks and the shorter-term, social, economic or other risks associated with smoking. Start by reviewing the health messages that Health Canada is requiring tobacco companies to include with their packages. Using the warning labels and your previous reading assignment, make two lists of messages. (The list have been started for you below.)

Long-Term Risks	Short Term Social/Other Risks
Cigarettes are highly addictive Cigarettes cause lung cancer/other cancers	85% of smokers started in their teens Smoking is expensive

 

Understand the audiences within your schools.

Working as a group list the different categories of students that attend your school, the places they go to between classes and how they could be reached with posters, displays, special activities and written materials. Some questions to help are listed below:
 
• Is there a grouping of grades within your school? (e.g. Junior and Senior High) Should the materials and messages in your campaign be different for the different age groups?
• Can you categorize the students in your school by their interests? Do people with these different interests tend to hang out in different places in the school? Should the materials and messages in your campaign be different for the different groups? Some examples of categories based on student interests are listed here:
  
  -Jocks (students interested in sports and athletics)
  -Quiet, shy (students who tend to be in the library)
  -Tech Nerds (students really into computers, technology, etc.)
  -Preppies (students who volunteer for student council, run school clubs, etc.)
  -Smokers (students who smoke during school day)
  -Girls (research shows that females start smoking for different reasons than boys)
  
  (Keep your notes from your discussion because this information will help you select the segments of the audience that you want to reach and which messages to use.)
  
  Group members will each read the Guide for Youth Leaders on influencing smoking behaviours among youth. Examine and discuss the reasons why youth smoke (p.1). In your opinion, are these the reasons that students smoke in your school? Are there other reasons? Are some of these reasons more important than others?
  
  Again, keep your notes on these discussions because this will help you when you start to determine what messages to use for your campaign.
  
  Now read through the Guide for Designing and Evaluating Anti-Tobacco Media Campaigns (prepared for adults in Mississippi). Go to the pages listed below in this Power Point presentation and discuss how these ideas could be used in your school awareness campaign. (Some of this guide will not apply to your campaign.) See how they tailor the messages to different age groups.
  
  
• Designing a Media Campaign - Elementary Age - Audience Insights (2-3 pages)
• Designing a Media Campaign - The Tween Years - Audience Insights (2-3 pages)
• Designing a Media Campaign - The Teen Years - Audience Insights (2-3 pages)

Now discuss the different segments of the audience in your overall school. List some ideas of how different messages could be tailored to the different groups of students. (If needed, check the student tool on How to Brainstorm. Keep this list, it will be part of your evaluation.
 

2. Understand the School/Community Context - Find Partners
   
   A successful school awareness campaign depends on cooperation from your community and the adults in your school. Working as a group, make a list of people in your community or school who might help you.
   
   Are there any issues or people in your school that might need to be dealt with cautiously or carefully?
   
   Is there a teacher, counselor or nurse who could help you with your campaign and maybe persuade other adults to cooperate with you?
   
   Familiarize yourself with the youth awareness campaign tools prepared by Health Canada and others. These tools are very interesting and could give your campaign more credibility with adults.
   
   
   • The Second Hand Smoke Speak Your Mind Contest (Health Canada)
   • World No Tobacco Day (Canadian Council for Tobacco Control)
   • Canada's Blue Ribbon Campaign for Smoke Free Spaces (Health Canada)
   
   

   Make sure you have obtained the necessary permissions from everybody in the school so that you can post and use your campaign materials. These include:
   
   

   • school principal
   • cafeteria manager
   • librarian
   • computer science teacher
   • etc.
   
   
3. Really understand the tobacco health problem.
   
   This step is very important. It is really easy to come up with a message/slogan that simply says "don't smoke!". However, this simple message only works for young children.
   
   There are powerful reasons why youth experiment with smoking. The drug nicotine is very addictive. When young people experiment with tobacco they are opening the door to addiction, so, health messages need to be specific and persuasive.
   
   Finish reading the rest of the Guide for Youth Leaders on influencing smoking behaviours of youth. Read sections on "important factors about messages"; "messages"; "what you can say if you smoke"; "what you can say to females"; "what you can say to athletes"; and "information about youth quitting".
   
   When you decide on the messages for your school campaign, you need to be diplomatic and not try to suggest simple solutions to complex problems or situations.
    
4. Select your health messages
   
   Go back to the list of messages that you categorized under long-term health risks and short-term risks. These are the types of messages that you need to select for your school campaign.
   
   Based on your reading assignments, your review of the Health Canada warning messages on cigarette packages and your assessment of the student audience in your school, select one or two key messages that you want to emphasize in your school awareness campaign. (Don't try to get too many messages into your campaign. It will only clutter your main message.
   
   
   • Do you want to focus on one segment of your audience? (e.g. girls, smokers, jocks)
   • Do you want to focus on long-term health risks or short-term social risks? (which ones?)
   • Do you want to focus on a concern of the majority (second-hand smoke) or help the minority (helping smokers to quit)?

   Prepare a one-page description of your selected health messages with an explanation of why you chose these messages.
   
   

5. Select your arguments, facts, examples, pictures, images that you want to use in your campaign.
   
   Go back and review the facts and arguments from Health Canada Warning Labels. Go to each health warning message in the list, read the facts behind the label for each message and then decide which of these facts or arguments would be best for your school campaign.>
   
   Be creative. Brainstorm with your group on how these messages could be made interesting or more relevant to youth.
   
   Check out this picture of Tobacco Industry's Poster Child>. Can you do something that this in your school?
   
    
6. Decide on the elements of your  school campaign.
   
   In this webquest, you are required as a group, to prepare a poster, a display, a web page> for you school website and an ad/insert for your school newsletter of handbook/agenda.
   
   At least one student from your group should be assigned to each element of your campaign. For example if you are doing a poster, a display, a web page and an ad/insert, you will need at least four students.
   
   Before each student or team starts working on their respective element, you will have to make decisions on elements such as columns, colours and images.
   
   You can create your own images, select some from the tobacco related web pages you have already used in this webquest, or you can see if these clipart/photo pages on health, public health or teaching has any images that you can use for your campaign. You should also check out the images used by Health Canada's Advertising Campaign to see if you can use any of their images or ideas.
   
   
7. Build in local or online links to information, support.
   
   Your awareness campaign materials should include local telephone numbers and addresses, as well as, website addresses (URLs) where the audience can obtain more information and support. This could include local health clinics and smoking cessation programs. Search your telephone directory and ask your school nurse or other health clinic for this information. 
   
   
8. Suggest action and follow-up.
   
   The awareness campaign materials should also include an action that individuals can take after they have read your message. This can be as a simple as suggesting a quiz on a website, entering a contest or organizing an activity. Review the Health Canada materials you have read earlier to see if any of them can be used in your campaign.
   
   
9. Plan your evaluation in advance.
   Your school awareness campaign should also include some evaluation activities to see if your campaign had an effect.
   
   This would be as simple as taking a survey of students in your school a week or two after your campaign to see if they noticed your campaign materials and remember what your health message were.
   
   You should also keep notes on the activities that everyone in your group did to plan and implement this campaign. This could include notes taken during your planning meetings, etc. (These notes should record what everyone agreed to, what everyone was suppose to do and any other important details.) You could also keep notes on what ideas and activities worked well and where you had problems.
   
   NOTE: These notes will be part of the evaluation process. Make certain that someone in the group is assigned to keep the notes and project records.
   
   
10. Divide up into small groups and prepare your materials
    
    Divide up the group to prepare each of the campaign materials for your campaign. Start by reading the Evaluation Criteria that relates to the different parts of the campaign. Discuss how these criteria will apply to your webquest with your teacher.
    
    
    • Health Posters
    • Health Ad/Insert Page
    • Health Displays
    • Health Web Pages/Website>>
       
11. Implement your school awareness campaign
    
    After all members of the group have prepared their respective campaign materials, implement your awareness campaign by putting up your posters, putting out your display in the school hallway, cafeteria or suitable location, inserting the page in the student handbook and adding the tobacco awareness page to your school or student website.



12. Evaluate your awareness campaign.
    
    When you have finished, complete your evaluation activities to gather information and feedback on how well you did.
    
    As part of the evaluation, each student should complete an evaluation on how well their group worked together. Use Section 3.3 of your Personal Health Journal to do this.
    
    Hold a meeting to evaluate and complete your school awareness campaign. This meeting should do the following:



• Review the notes and records of all your webquest activities. Create a list of the things that went well and the places where you had problems.
• Examine the results of the feedback you had from students. If you did a survey of students, discuss the results.
• Discuss the feedback (including the view of the members of the group) on how your health message was received by students.
• Invite your teacher or other adults in the school to give you their feedback on the campaign.
• Using the > Evaluation Criteria for School Awareness Campaigns as a discussion guide, go through and try to assign a score for each of the criteria to your school campaign.
• Discuss the tabulation of your group members' evaluations. How well did your group work together? (Someone will need to do this anonymously before this meeting.)
• Prepare a list of suggestions for other students who might do this webquest and submit the suggestions via the feedback page on the webquest website.

1. Each student doing this webquest will be evaluated on these activities.
    
• their review of the assigned readings in Step One (that used Section 3.2 of the Personal Health Journal).
   
2. Each team working on one of the campaign materials will be given a group score for their work on that specific element of the campaign. (Step One of the campaign) Evaluation criteria for each of these types of materials can be found at:



• health posters
• health displays
• health ads/inserts
• health web pages/websites
   
3. All members of the group will be given a score based on these activities
:
 
• the list of long-term and short-term risks from smoking (Step One)
• the list of different messages tailored to different segments of the school audience. (Step Two
• your one page report on the selection of your health messages. (Step Six)
• Step Thirteen).