Blog post #7

 For my blog post this week, I decided to examine a lesson plan pertaining to Opioid use. I found this to be a very informative and beneficial lesson plan, as I felt it was set up in such a way that students could better retain the information.

This lesson plan contains multiple articles within it that have corresponding activities. These articles include information pertaining to marijuana, opioids, and screen time. For each of these sections, the lesson plan comes with critical components that will test the student's knowledge of the information they're reading.

One of the staple components of the lesson plan was reading comprehension questions. These were implemented throughout the plan as they tested to see what information the students retained and comprehended from the reading. For example, within the marijuana section, the comprehension questions looked to see if students could identify the effects marijuana has on the brain and why it is that teenagers are more vulnerable to what comes with marijuana. 

Another activity that was heavily observed in this plan on 

was writing prompts. Multiple topics for discussion were presented to students, and they were based on the grade levels of the students. The groups were classified into grades 6-8, 9-10, and 11-12. Within the Opioids section of the plan, a writing prompt presented to students from grades 6 to 8 wanted students to demonstrate their knowledge of the effects and health risks of opioid use along with heroin and fentanyl. Students in grades 11 and 12 were asked to demonstrate possible ways to reduce the overuse of opioids that our society is seeing today.

While the articles came with the same activities, such as reading comprehension and writing prompts, it seemed like some articles provided their own unique activity to go along with the message. My favorite was the one from the marijuana article, as it gave a true false page for the students to examine and respond to before reading the article and then after as well. After reading the article, students had to provide supporting evidence to back up their choice for each question. The activity is pictured below.

In terms of the strengths of the plan, I felt having a unique activity for some readings was very beneficial. By having this variance in activity, I feel that student engagement is heavily accounted for, and they'll look forward to doing the activity. Especially if they may not have enjoyed the previous one.

A weakness to me of the plan was the repetition of the activities. While reading comprehension and writing prompts are beneficial to implement, I just don't think they should've been attached to each of the articles. This, to me, allows students to get bored with the repetition and the systematic aspect of the task. I would change this by maybe only using the reading comprehension questions for some articles and the writing prompts for the other articles.

Reference

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Archives. Heads Up: Real News About Drugs and Your Body. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://archives.nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/nida_yr18_teacheredition_compilation.pdf

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023, January 3). Opioids: What you need to know. National Institutes of Health. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/parents-educators/lesson-plans/opioids-what-you-need-know