Unit Summary
Cigarette and its tobacco content have long known to be hazardous to health, not just to the smoker themselves, but also to others around them. Despite the mass coverage and warnings about its danger, the numbers of smokers are increasing every year. The major concern is the youngsters, who are getting addicted to this habit.

In this unit, students play the role of Health Officers to study the contents of cigarette and its effects on the body, the reasons and consequences of smoking. They interview ex-smoker in order to get first hand information about this deadly trap. The students sensitise their peers by presenting a multimedia presentation and narrating the experience of a smoker who has quit smoking and has undergone a traumatic phase. The students, teachers and parents are benefited when these young health officers take up the challenge to create awareness and suggest ways to quit smoking by creating a wiki. The students also form a group “Tak nak Rokok” (Say No to Cigarettes) to reach out to other students who need help.

Curriculum-Framing Questions

• Essential Question:
  Are we making the right choice?
• Unit Question:
  What can I do to reduce smoking in my community?
• Content Questions:
  What is cigarette?
  What are the contents of cigarette?
  How to quit smoking?
  What impacts does smoking have on us?
  What makes smoking a common habit in the society?

Assessment Processes
View how a variety of student-centred assessments are used in The Silent Killer Unit Plan. These assessments help students and teachers to set goals; monitor students’ progress; provide feedback; assess thinking, processes, performances, and products and reflect on learning throughout the learning cycle.

Instructional Procedures
Orientation on Decision Making Skill (1 Period, 40 minutes)
Discuss the Essential Question Are we making the right choice? Encourage students to think about the decisions which are affecting their lives. Ask the students to list all kinds of decisions regardless of how large or how small using the decision chart (DOC 331.0KB) as the followings:

My past decisions

My present decisions

My future decisions

After making the list of decisions, have students think about all of these decisions and how they have affected or are going to affect their lives. Make students sit in small groups and share any one crucial decision that they have made and how it has changed their lives. Conclude the session by sensitising them about choices they make at every point of their lives and how every choice is capable of changing their lives.

Take home activity: Distribute complete the story worksheet (DOC 124.0KB) to students. Ask them to complete the story individually. Remind students to visualise them in the role and complete the story.

Build the Project Scenario (1 Period, 40 minutes)
Make students sit in small groups and share their story. Ask the group members to take note at every point of time that we have a lot of options and we have to make a choice.

Introduce the project using the teacher presentation (PPT 1.45MB) entitled Smoking: A matter of choice? This supports students to find ideas related to the Essential Question. Brief the students on their role as Health Officers. Explain that their aim is to educate their peers and community members about the hazards of smoking and persuade them to avoid smoking. Ask the Unit Question How can I help to reduce smoking in the community? Have students discuss and share their thinking with the class. Tell students that they will be exploring this question throughout the project.

Divide students in groups and discuss the project. Spend some time with each group and guide them to plan their project. Ask them to create the project milestones and write out the different tasks of the project. Make sure students work in team and divide the workload. Have student refer to the teamwork rubric (DOC 37.0KB) while they work in their groups.

Web Search and Discussion (2 Periods, 40 minutes each)
Inform students that they are in the research stage. Discuss with them what information is necessary for the project. Provide a list of related Web sites for students to look for the information and encourage them to also search beyond the suggested Web sites. The Smoking Scavenger Hunt* Web site serves as a guide to help students in researching the relevant information for the project. It might include the following:

• Contents of cigarette and its effect on human body
• Statistical data of smokers in Malaysia and support it with the rationale of the current trend
• Methods to quit smoking

Ask students to use the research checklist (DOC 35.5KB) to self-assess their Web search and note down the Web sites that they had visited in the Internet research record form (DOC 49.0KB). Make students sit in their groups. Encourage students to discuss about their research with their group members. Here, teacher needs to make sure that students fully comprehend the topic and their respective tasks before proceeding with the project. Ask students to note down their questions, doubts, clarifications and spend time with each group to clarify their doubts and answer their questions.

Note: Students might become very sensitive about the topic, if their family members are smokers. Orient the students that we have choices to make in our life and each choice has some consequences attached with it. Be unbiased about the habit.

Ground work for interview session with Ex Smoker (1 period, 40 minutes)
Tell students that they have to conduct an interview with an ex-smoker. Orient the students that the aim of the interview is to get first hand information about the consequences of smoking.  Hold a discussion in the small groups about what the students would like to ask. Make the group leaders note down the questions that they would like to ask. Make sure that each group has covered all the aspects like - why he started smoking, reasons for him to quit smoking, the effects of smoking and etc.

Interview session with Ex-smoker (3 periods, 40 minutes each)
Orient students about the pre interview, during interview and post interview steps through by interview guideline presentation (PPT 187.0KB). Have students use the interview checklist (DOC 30.0KB) to prepare the interview. Inform them to write down their discussion during the interview in the interview record template (DOC 33.0KB).

Make a schedule of interviews with the ex-smoker and share the time and the duration of the interview with the students.  Make each group interview ex smoker during the class.

Make students discuss in their group and compile the information from the interview. Guide the students as they analyse and interpret their findings. Also, it is important to orient students that the interview session with ex-smokers represents their opinion/views. Some opinions/views might not be scientific.

Multimedia Presentation (1 period, 40 minutes + 3 Lab periods)
Ask students to prepare a story board of their multimedia presentation to present their analysis of interview data and suggest strategies to reduce smoking in the community. Ask students to share findings and analysis of the interview and consider the Unit Question - How can I help to reduce smoking in the community? while preparing the multimedia presentation.

Discuss and distribute the presentation scoring sheet (DOC 66.0KB) to each team as a guideline to produce an excellent presentation. Allocate about three periods for students to work on the presentation. Conduct frequent meetings with each group to monitor their progress and guide them accordingly.

Self – Help Group (1 period, 40 minutes)
Make students brainstorm about the different ways to help those in need. Orient students that one of the ways is to form a group with the help of school counsellor to help others. Ask the school counsellor to do a session with the students and provide the needed guidance for the self help group. The students can also encourage others to be a part of such group. Give time to students to think about the meeting time and co-ordinate with the counsellor for the same.

Wiki Creation (1 period, 40 minutes + 3 Lab periods)
Remind students that they have to make the community aware about the hazards of smoking. One of the ways to reach out to the larger community is to create a wiki. If students are not familiar with wiki, introduce them to the wiki as a collaborative website that can be edited by anyone or only designated users. Give a mini lesson on wiki if necessary.

Guide students to make a wiki which includes information about the contents of cigarettes, its effects on the body system, reasons for people to smoke and ways to quit smoking. Also orient the students that the wiki can be used for making the community aware about their self help group. Distribute the wiki rubric (DOC 44.0KB) to each group and inform them to use it as guidelines in creating their wiki. Allocate about three periods for students to create the wiki and conduct meetings in between to check the progress.

Class Presentation (2 periods, 40 minutes each)
Dedicate the final week for each group to present their work. Make students present their multimedia presentation (PPT 453.0KB) and wiki* in the computer lab to the peer group and teachers. Remind students to be in their role of health officers while showcasing. Encourage students to use the peer feedback form (DOC 40.5KB) to give their comments on each presentation and wiki. Evaluate the presentation and wiki using the presentation scoring sheet (DOC 66.0KB) and wiki rubric (DOC 44.0KB).

Concluding Activity (1 period, 40 minutes)
Revisit the Essential Question Are we making the right choice? and conduct a short discussion in class revolving around the choice between to smoke or not to smoke. Slowly, broaden the discussion to cover other aspects of life where one has the power to choose for good or bad. Explain that each action that we choose has either good or bad implications on ourselves and also on others around us. Therefore, it is important for us to choose wisely and to take into considerations the welfare and feelings of others.

Prerequisite Skills

• Able to read and interpret information
• Basic computer skills

Differentiated Instruction
Resource Student

• These students will be guided by  their  peers and teacher as they progress. Extra time could also be allocated for them to complete this project.

Gifted Student

• Students will participate in all activities and also guide their friends to write articles for the project. Gifted students will be given the opportunity to do extra extensions to their products.  They would also be given more challenging task to complete. These students will be nominated as group leaders and will help resource students in their group in completing the  project.

Credits
The project idea has been developed by Naziatul Azrina Bt Azni and Nik Nareiani Bt.Nik Ab.Rahman.  A team of teachers expanded the plan into an example that you can see here.