Since the start of 2020, professionally created school lesson plans and teaching resources on oral health have
been made available to Australia's teachers, thanks to the ADA's collaboration with the not-for-profit organisation SugarByHalf, with the material then distributed through Cool Australia – also a not-for-profit body.
The lessons use oral health to cover off such mandatory subjects as maths and science in the Australian and New Zealand curricula, and can thus be embedded within those subjects in school lesson scheduling. (In fact, the maths lessons last year made up three of the top five SugarByHalf lessons.) This collaboration has allowed the ADA to ensure the overall message getting through to kids in these lessons is well informed and in line with the latest industry knowledge on oral health.
Indeed, early childhood age groups have been the target for these lessons this year, as the age period of 0-4 years is when the foundations for children's later health and wellbeing are established. During this period, children acquire a vast range of skills and behaviours through their family, social and school environment. Providing this information during this key period of learning can hopefully lead to improvements in future oral health.
This year, the ADA-SugarByHalf collaboration has had a bespoke oral health storybook created for children, with two versions now available – early childhood and primary school. The book Guardians of the Gums is available for free online, or you can purchase a paperback copy.
This book can be used by dentists when discussing oral health with young children in the community. "I used the [Guardians of the Gums] book when I visited an early learning centre this year to discuss oral health," one ADA member has told us. "Children love superheroes and they all picked their favourite from the story. Following we did a recall activity where the kids were asked to remember the main message from each Guardian. This actually forms the first lesson from the Cool Australia lesson series."
Cool Australia's Head of Education, Mark Drummond says, "The need for these resources is clear: they're in
high demand by teachers (and parents). The funding from the ADA allows us to give these lessons free to teachers, meaning that those in rural and remote communities, or in low socioeconomic areas, have the same access as anyone else. Together, we're reducing inequality in education and helping our kids live healthy, active lives."
