Consequences of Cannabis Misuse – Your Choices

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Resource
Cannabis Education Resources
Grade(s)
12

Overview

  • Students engage in a Class Jigsaw to gather and share information about the consequences of cannabis misuse, personal factors that may influence misuse of substances, and the importance of coping and interpersonal skills to being resilient and making healthy choices in situations involving cannabis.
  • Students complete an Exit Card and a role-play to communicate their understanding of the consequences of cannabis misuse, personal factors that may influence misuse of substances, and the importance of coping and interpersonal skills to being resilient and making healthy choices in situations involving cannabis.
  • This activity may be used as part of a unit of learning. It may also be used as a lead-in to the Grade 12 “Cannabis Issues, Trends, and Impacts”.

Curriculum Expectations

1.1, 1.2, 1.5, C1.2, C2.3

Materials Needed

Learning Goals

  • We are learning to describe the short-term and long-term consequences of substance misuse, such as cannabis misuse.
  • We are learning to describe the legal consequences of underage cannabis use.
  • We are learning how our personal protective and risk factors help us develop resilience and enhance our ability to make healthy choices.
  • We are learning to describe how coping and interpersonal skills help us develop resilience and improve our ability to make healthy choices, such as avoiding the use of cannabis.

Sample Success Criteria

  • I can describe the short-term and long-term consequences of misusing cannabis.
  • I can describe the legal consequences of misusing cannabis.
  • I can describe how my personal protective and risk factors help me develop my resilience and make healthy choices related to cannabis use.
  • I can describe how my coping and interpersonal skills help me be resilient and improve my ability to make healthy choices, such as avoiding using cannabis.

Opportunities For Assessment

  • During the Minds On, use the student responses in the Quiz, Quiz, Trade activity to assess what students know about cannabis and what gaps exist in students’ understanding.
  • During the Minds On, use the individual Reflection Cards to assess students’ knowledge of the consequences of cannabis misuse, legal consequences of underage use, personal protective and risk factors, coping and interpersonal skills, and resilience in order to determine what students know and what they need to know more about these concepts and their interrelationships.
  • During the Action, use the group Mind Maps to assess students’ knowledge of the consequences of cannabis misuse, legal consequences of underage use, protective and risk factors, coping and interpersonal skills, and resilience in order to determine gaps in understanding.
  • During the Action, use the individually completed See, Think, Wonder Templates and Home Group discussions to assess students’ critical and creative thinking skills.
  • During the Consolidation, use Exit Cards to assess students’ critical and creative thinking and understanding related to the Learning Goals and Success Criteria for the activity.
  • During the Consolidation, use the student mentor discussions to assess students’ understanding of consequences of cannabis misuse, legal consequences of underage use, protective and risk factors, coping and interpersonal skills, resilience, and making healthy choices when dealing with situations involving cannabis.

Minds-On

  • Create cue cards or strips of paper that each contain a statement about cannabis that is either a fact or a myth. Write the statement on one side of the cue card (or strip of paper) and then the fact or myth on the opposite side, depending on what the statement represents.
  • Provide each student with one of the statements and have them engage in a Quiz, Quiz, Trade activity, in which students circulate around the room pairing up with another student. Each student quizzes their partner by reading their statement aloud, and the partner decides if the statement is a fact or a myth. Once both partners have quizzed each other, they trade statements, find new partners, and engage in another round of Quiz, Quiz, Trade. Have students complete as many rounds of Quiz, Quiz, Trade as possible depending on the time available for this part of the whole activity.
  • Share the following statement with the whole class, by writing it on the board or chart paper or displaying it on a Powerpoint slide or whiteboard:
    • Now that cannabis has been legalized in Canada for adults, it will be more readily available in private homes and through retail and commercial outlets. Given this legal change and the increased access to cannabis, it is important for youth to develop deeper understandings of cannabis use such as: the consequences of cannabis misuse, including the potential legal consequences of underage use; their personal protective and risk factors that may influence them to misuse cannabis; the importance of having coping and interpersonal skills to be resilient and make healthy choices in situations involving cannabis.
  • Provide students with a Reflection Card (e.g., cue card, blank paper, or Graphic Organizer). Have students individually consider the statement and respond to the following:
    • What do you know about the short-term and long-term effects and consequences of cannabis misuse?
    • What do you know about the legal consequences of using cannabis when underage and how this might impact an individual in the short term and long term?
    • What do you know about your protective and risk factors that might influence you to misuse cannabis and what factors might put you at risk for using/misusing cannabis?
    • Why are having coping and interpersonal skills important to resilience and to making healthy choices about cannabis use?

Action

Task: Class Jigsaw

  • Divide the class into groups of 7–8.
  • Post seven pieces chart paper around the space, each with one of the following seven headings:
    • Short-term effects and consequences of cannabis misuse
    • Long-term effects and consequences of cannabis misuse
    • Legal consequences of using cannabis when underage
    • Legal consequences of cannabis misuse as an adult
    • Protective and risk factors and their relationship to resilience
    • Coping and interpersonal skills and their relationship to resilience
    • The relationship between resilience, cannabis use/misuse, and making healthy choices
  • Provide each group with sticky notes and give them sufficient time (5–10 minutes) to jot down what they collectively know about each of the seven topics, writing each idea on a separate sticky note. When groups have had sufficient time to complete the task, have them post their sticky notes on the corresponding chart paper.
  • Explain to students that they will be completing the next part of the activity using a Jigsaw Strategy with a Home Group and an Expert Group. Explain to groups that they are starting in their Home Group.
  • Have Home Groups assign each member to one of the seven topics based on interest in the topic. Group members may have to negotiate to determine who is assigned each topic to make sure at least one person is assigned to each topic.
  • Have students reassemble at the chart paper for the topic they have been assigned by their group. Explain that they are now in their Expert Group.
  • Provide Expert Groups with information related to their specific topic, such as in Health Effects of Cannabis; the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction’s Cannabis fact sheet; and Cannabis Education: A Toolkit for Educating Youth (page 37)

Task: Mind Mapping (Small Group)

  • Have Expert Groups use the sticky notes and the additional information provided to create a Mind Map using their topic as the central idea and to make connections to the other six topics where applicable (e.g., group 1 focuses on the topic of short-term effects and consequences of cannabis misuse, generating as much information about the effects and consequences of cannabis misuse and how this might affect an individual physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and economically and then makes potential connections to the other six topics, such as how short-term use may lead to long-term misuse).
  • After Expert Groups have had sufficient time to populate their Mind Maps, have students return to their Home Groups.

Task: Gallery Walk (Pairs or Trios)

  • Provide each student with a Graphic Organizer, such as a See, Think, Wonder Template, to record their responses during the next stage of the activity.
  • Have students form trios with other students, either in their Home Group or their Expert Group. This will encourage students to work and dialogue with diverse students in their class.
  • Have trios complete a Gallery Walk of the Mind Maps, pausing at each Mind Map to populate their individual See, Think, Wonder Template. Although students are in trios to generate discussion at each station, remind students that they are to individually complete their See, Think, Wonder Template making sure they have responded to the content on each Mind Map.
  • At the end of the Gallery Walk, have students return to their Home Groups.
  • Have students share their thinking and wonderings from their See, Think, Wonder Template with their Home Group. During this sharing, each student takes a turn moderating the discussion when their Expert Group’s Mind Map becomes the topic of discussion. If more than one student was in the same Expert Group, they should both some of that information.

Consolidation

  • Review the Learning Goals and Success Criteria with the students, and provide students with an Exit Card.
  • Direct students to keep the Learning Goals and Success Criteria in mind as they complete their Exit Card.
  • Have students assume the role of a mentor to a younger student in the school or community or to a younger sibling, and provide students with the following scenario:
    • Your mentee has sent you a message asking to talk about cannabis. They tell you they have been involved in a situation involving cannabis but are too nervous to tell you exactly what happened. They have a lot of questions about cannabis and need help dealing with their situation. Use what you have learned in this activity to provide your mentee with information about cannabis to support them in making a healthy decision about their situation.
  • Provide students with a variety of options to complete the task, such as writing a series of texts or emails that illustrate their conversation with their mentee or creating a role-play between themselves and another student in the role of their mentee, and record it for submission purposes.

Ideas For Extension

  • Have students share their role-play with the class.
  • Have students create a brief presentation for younger students in the school about the consequences of cannabis use, how protective and risk factors may influence their decisions, and strategies for making safe choices when dealing with situations involving cannabis.

Notes To Teachers

Providing opportunities for students to explore concepts from multiple perspectives and through a variety of lenses enriches their learning.

  • Explore cross-curricular opportunities, such as students reading literature related to youth struggling with situations involving cannabis, as part of their English class, investigating legal issues related to cannabis use through Canadian law, or the physical effects of cannabis through Introductory Kinesiology or other Health and Physical Education courses.
  • Explore opportunities for students in a Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM), a Health for Life, or a Recreation and Healthy Active Living Leadership course to create presentations for peers or younger students in order to consolidate their learning and/or develop their leadership and specialist skills related to health and well-being.
  • Encourage students to develop critical thinking and inquiry skills for information related to cannabis use including questioning, predicting, analyzing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and exploring alternatives to help guide effective decision making about the use of cannabis and other drugs.
  • This activity focuses on cannabis education, so in order to fully address the learning as articulated in curriculum expectations C1.2 and C2.3, students should be provided with additional opportunities to investigate consequences of misuse of other substances, personal factors that may influence misuse of other substance, addictive behaviours, and the importance of coping and interpersonal skills to staying resilient and making healthy choices, including the avoidance of use of other substances and related addictive behaviours. This may be included as part of this activity or in a follow-up activity.