Substances and the Developing Brain: Health Unit 3, Grade 7 (Letters & Devotion)

Description

Substances and the Developing Brain is Unit 3 of Health for Middle School (Grade 7), the Letters & Devotion Health course, complete in one printable PDF: 10 lessons, the unit check-up and the answer key, 64 pages.

• The dopamine reward pathway as activated by nicotine versus by food
• Addiction as neuroadaptation (tolerance and withdrawal), not a willpower deficit
• Vocabulary: tolerance, withdrawal, dependence
• Advertising tactics used in vape/nicotine marketing and the risk-perception distortion each produces
• The relationship between an advertisement’s implied biological claim and the addiction information it omits
• The four-step refusal skill script
• The four-step refusal script applied to unrehearsed peer-pressure scenarios
• Exposure and protective factor, reapplied from injury contexts to substance-access contexts
• Accurate, accessible sources of help for nicotine use (school counselor, national quitline, trusted adult)
• The abstract structure of refusal skills, generalized beyond substance-specific contexts

Every lesson is written for a parent with no teaching background: it opens with a short script to read aloud, names the specific wrong idea a student is likely to reach for and how to correct it, and closes with a practice sheet you may copy for your household. Scripture references are King James Version throughout. Black-and-white, 8.5 x 11 in. The whole year of this course is also in this store as a single book.

AI note: The written content of this resource was drafted with AI tools, then reviewed and edited by the author.