Fifth-graders tackle food, health issues
“This is what your teeth look like when you chew tobacco,” said Griffin Russell, showing a display of a decayed mouth to third- and fourth-graders at Zippel Elementary School.
“People who chew tobacco have a higher chance of getting mouth and throat diseases, and this is what it could look like. I don’t think you want that,” said Russell, a fifth-grader at the Presque Isle school, giving the presentation as part of an annual health fair last Thursday.
He and other fifth-graders were covering topics such as food labels and second-hand smoke in their presentations — assignments that help them become independent thinkers and good communicators as they head towards middle school, said fifth grade teacher Robin Northsworthy.
“We know that they’ll be exposed to that in sixth, seventh and eighth grade,” she said of tobacco. “Somebody along the way is going to be asked to try.”
Divided into teams of three, the students researched a dozen topics, including the dangers of tobacco, the importance of drinking enough water and different kinds of fat. They created informational displays and each wrote a one-minute speech presented to third- and fourth-graders during the day of the health fair and their parents in the evening.
“These are topics we need to teach but don’t really have time to get to and cover completely,” Northsworthy said.
It also offers students the chance to understand those issues for themselves.
“We tell them what to do lots of times. As children, they’re not really sure why they have to do it,” Northsworthy said. “This helps them do their own research and understand why they should or shouldn’t do something. Plus, when they’re done, they’re amazed at what they found out.”
In the past, Northworthy said, “I’ve had parents say, ‘What did you do to my kid? I can’t even go through a drive-thru anymore, because they rattle off why we shouldn’t be eating it.’”
The health fair included two tobacco-related presentations, one on chewing tobacco and one on smoking, both geared at youth prevention and also education for family members who may using tobacco, Northsworthy said.
In the 2015 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, 4.5 percent of Aroostook County middle-schoolers said they had smoked a cigarette in the last month and 1.8 percent reported they had used chewing tobacco. More than 20 percent of middle-schoolers said they’d been in the presence of someone smoking in the last seven days.
Students tackled the subject of second-hand smoke for the first time this year at the health fair. One of the students with a relative who smokes proposed the idea, Northworthy said.
Melissa Buck, another fifth grade teacher, said she was excited to see how students reacted in the course of researching their assignments. Griffin Russell and the others who covered chewing tobacco were upset when they learned that some baseball athletes are tobacco chewers.
“It’s almost like you heard their disappointment: ‘Aw, David Ortiz?’” Buck said, mimicking their reaction. The Boston Red Sox slugger chewed tobacco for years and only quit after San Diego Padres star Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer in 2014 at age 54.
