Vaccination Information and Personal Health

Overview

• Students apply their critical thinking skills to formulate and explore questions about vaccinations as one factor that contributes to healthy development and their personal health. 
• Students use available resources from media and websites to gather and assess information for credibility, currency, accuracy, and bias. 
• Students reflect on the information gathered about vaccinations to determine if it is sufficient to make informed choices about their personal health and identify strategies that can be used to find credible, relevant information to help them make informed decisions about vaccinations.

Materials Needed  

• Access to a shared document (chart paper and markers or online interactive tool)
• Access to available evidence-informed information about vaccinations 
• KWL Chart

Learning Goals

• We are learning about vaccinations as one factor that contributes to healthy development and personal health. 
• We are learning how to evaluate social media and websites for credible information about vaccinations.
• We are learning how to gather and assess the information collected to determine if it is sufficient to answer our questions and make an informed decision about personal health. 

Sample Success Criteria

• I can identify how vaccinations contribute to personal health.
• I can compare information from various sites to determine if the content is true, up to date and relevant to my questions about vaccinations. 
• I can assess the information I have gathered to determine if I need more information to make an informed decision for my personal health.

Opportunities for Assessment

• During the Minds-On, use the large group discussion to assess student understanding of the importance of being inclusive, respectful, and accepting of others, respecting each other's point of view.
• During the Action, use the shared documents and evaluation of available resources to assess students' ability to gather information and evaluate social media and websites for credible information about vaccinations.
• At the end of the Consolidation, use the KWL Charts to assess students’ understanding of vaccination as one factor that contributes to their personal health and strategies to determine the credibility of information gathered to make informed decisions for their personal health.  

Minds-On

Lead a large group discussion to have students recall the importance of being inclusive, respectful, and accepting of others and creating a welcoming classroom.

Teacher prompt: “Why is it important to be inclusive? What are some ways we can make our classroom and our school welcoming and accepting of everyone?” 

Student responses might include:

• “Feeling like you don’t belong in class, at school, or in society can have a major impact on your mental health and well-being.”
• “When I feel included and welcome at school, I am more self-confident and better able to value myself and others.”
• “We learn more about one another when everyone feels confident enough to share their experiences.”
• “When we accept each other, we recognize that we are unique, what we have in common, and our different perspectives are valuable.”
• “When we listen, we learn not to make assumptions based on what we think we know.” 
• “We take turns and listen respectfully to each other. We don’t interrupt.” 

Using Direct Instruction, remind students that it is important to keep these ideas in mind when discussing health topics such as vaccinations where individuals may have different points of view and make different choices for their personal health. Listening to and learning about, and respecting each other's point of view, is important to build healthy relationships. 

Action

Share the Learning Goals with students and co-construct the Success Criteria. 

Use a KWL Chart strategy to have students identify what they know about vaccinations as one factor that contributes to their personal health and what they want to know about. Have students leave the last column blank to complete during the consolidation.

Divide students into groups of 4 or 5 and provide access to a shared document. Have groups use their KWL Charts to generate questions about vaccinations and how they contribute to a person’s health. Invite groups to share some of their questions with the class. 

Student questions might include:

• “How do vaccines work?” 
• “How do they affect a person’s health?”
• “What are some side-effects?” 
• “How does my body fight infections on its own?”
• “What vaccinations are available to get if someone wants one?”
• “Why would an individual choose to be vaccinated or not be vaccinated?”
• “What are some factors that affect a person’s ability or choice to get a vaccination?”  
• “How do I know if what I hear about vaccinations is true?”
• “How do I decide on vaccinations for my personal health?”
• “Where can I go to get information about vaccinations?”

Using Direct Instruction, explain that social media and websites provide us with opportunities to find answers about health topics such as vaccinations. However, to make an informed decision for our personal health, it is essential to know if the information is accurate, up to date, reliable and credible so we can rely on it to make decisions. We can ask ourselves some questions when we read or view text to determine if it is a trusted source, such as when was it created? This tells us if it is current information or out of date. We can find out who the author is and what makes them an expert. This helps us determine if the information is reliable. We can look at key elements of a text, the information provided and what might be missing. This tells us if it is a balanced point of view or contains a bias. We can also determine if it is relevant by finding information in it that answers our questions. 

Use a media text such as Infographic: Vaccines Work, a Think Aloud strategy and these questions to model how to analyse and interpret the information provided in the text. 

Think Aloud questions: 

• “What do you notice about this text?”
• “Why do you think this media text was produced?”
• “What questions do you have about it?”
• “What more do you want to know?”
• “What message does it convey?”
• “What information is missing?”
• “How might people react differently to the information on the text based on their own biases or beliefs?”
• “Do you trust that the information is accurate and true? Why?"

Provide groups with a Graphic Organizer for Analysing Sources and access to available resources to answer their questions about vaccinations, such as WHO: How do vaccines work? and Vaccine Information Guide. Have groups complete the following tasks:

• Record their answers on their shared document.
• Evaluate the information gathered to determine if they have sufficient information they can trust to help someone make an informed decision about vaccinations. 
• Use their graphic organizer to assess the available resources for Currency, Reliability of Information, Relevance and Point of View. 

Invite groups to share their evaluation of one of the available resources with the class, comparing and contrasting other groups’ assessments of the resources. 

Consolidation 

Have students complete the L column on their KWL Chart to record what they have learned about vaccination as one factor that contributes to their personal health. Have students assess their learning to determine if they have gathered sufficient information to make informed decisions about vaccinations. Have students identify one question they still have that might help them make an informed decision.   

Ideas for Extension

• Have students create a media product that informs people their age about how to evaluate social media and websites for credible information about vaccinations. Provide two strategies that they can use to find credible, relevant information to make informed decisions about vaccinations. 
• Invite local public health to answer the questions students still have about vaccinations.

Notes to Teachers

• This lesson is not intended to convince students that vaccination is the necessary route to optimum health. Decisions related to vaccines remain the responsibility of the parents/caregivers in the context of their family values and beliefs. Instead, it provides students with knowledge about vaccines as one way to prevent the transmission of diseases and the skills needed to participate in informed decisions about their health. 
• It is important to provide opportunities for students to listen and learn about diverse views and understand how these may differ from their own.
• Before teaching students about healthy living topics such as vaccinations, educators should reflect on their own assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes, and biases, as part of creating a safe and inclusive learning environment. Educators should carefully consider the ways their perspectives are articulated to their students and the ways they respond to the ideas of others. An effective way for educators to identify personal bias is through personal reflection. Consider reflecting on these questions to examine personal beliefs and identify potential bias and possible reactions towards the topic of vaccinations.
  • What personal biases and beliefs shape my emotional reaction to the content?
  • What steps will I take to support my students so that my personal biases and beliefs will not interfere with my ability to respond professionally to their questions about vaccination?
  • How will I address the curriculum expectations if aspects of it challenge my personal beliefs? 
  • In what ways do I demonstrate that I consider and respect the diverse values, experiences, backgrounds, and identities of my students?
  • Is the diversity of my students reflected in the scenarios, activities, and resources used in my classroom?
• Be mindful: When engaging students in learning about vaccinations, be mindful of discussions about COVID-19 in a medical context. Inequities and discrimination in the health care system in Canada have been a cause of trauma for Indigenous and Black people and communities across Canada and a deep mistrust of the health care system¹,². Additionally, students may have experienced direct or indirect loss or trauma as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Visit the Adopting a Trauma-Informed Approach webpage for tips when engaging students in healthy living topics such as vaccinations.

Additional Resources

• Ophea’s Vaccination Talks Resource Database
• Ophea’s Vaccination Talks Discussion Guides
• Ophea and School Mental Health Ontario's Stress Management and Coping Virtual Field Trips
• Ophea’s Inquiry Based Learning in Health and Physical Education Resource
• Ophea’s Social and Emotional Learning Supports (SELS)

¹Gunn, B. Ignored to Death: systemic Racism in the Canadian Healthcare System. Retrieved from: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/EMRIP/Health/UniversityManitoba.pdf

²Government of Canada. (2022). Social determinants and inequities in health for Black Canadians: A Snapshot. Retrieved from: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/population-health/what-determines-health/social-determinants-inequities-black-canadians-snapshot.html