HPV & CERVICAL CANCER

What You and Your Pupils Need to Know

Vaccination and Immunisation Lesson Plan

Key Topics:
Impact of vaccination and immunisation
What a vaccination is and how it works
Vaccine what and when

Curriculum Support for:

Science
PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic
Education Personal wellbeing)
PSE
SRE

The Royal Society of Health

Introduction
In May 1980 the WHO (World Health Organisation) declared that smallpox had been eradicated worldwide.
This terrible disease is no longer causing pain, suffering and death due to vaccination. Today it is hoped that in
the future many more diseases including some cancers will also be eradicated.
Content: during this lesson students will hear about the impact of the once common and deadly disease
smallpox, explore the important role that vaccination and immunisation programmes have played in reducing
the impact of disease, learn about the HPV vaccination and understand why vaccination is still important
today.
This lesson can be used as a means of introducing the distribution and collection process for consent forms.
Audience: recommended for students 12-14 years. This lesson plan can be delivered by a teacher, school
nurse or healthy schools co-ordinator (if you have one in your school) and may be particularly useful prior to
students receiving their cervical cancer vaccination and tetanus, diphtheria and polio (Td/IPV) booster
injections.

Planning and Preparation / Resources Required

To deliver this lesson you will need:
Susan Palmers Diary Entry Source 1 supplied
Vaccination and Immunisation Fact Sheet copied x 1 per student Source 2 supplied
The Royal Society of Health HPV and Cervical Cancer The Basics leaflet available to download from
www.rsph.org
Optional, IWB (interactive whiteboard) lesson plan support available to download or view at www.rsph.org
Further source: NHS Leaflet Teen Immunisation your questions answered
http://www.immunisation.nhs.uk/publications/275777_Teenage.pdf

Links to the Curriculum, Vaccination and Immunisation

12-14yrs
Key Stage 3
PSHE: Personal wellbeing
1.2a, 1.2b, 1.2c, 1.3a, 1.4c,
2.1f, 2.2a, 2.2b, 2,2c, 2.2e, 2.2f, 2.3b.
PSHE: Economic wellbeing
1.3a, 1.3c.

14-16yrs
Key Stage 4
PSHE: Personal wellbeing
1.2a, 1.2b, 1.2c, 1.3a, 1.4c,
2.1e, 2.2a, 2.2b, 2,2c, 2.2e, 2.3b.
PSHE: Economic wellbeing
1.3a, 1.3c.

Key Stage 3: Science

Organisms, behaviour and health 3.3c.
Curriculum opportunities 4h.
Unit 8c: microbes & disease.

Key Stage 4: Science

Organisms and health 5e.

Suggested Extension Ideas

For England: PowerPoint on basic Every Child Matters.
Interactive whiteboard photos on cancer and diseases and screening and immunisation process.
Focus on screening process to demonstrate how the programme of detection works alongside a
programme of prevention.
Plenary could be carried out on a PowerPoint ready to be filled in on the IWB.

Learning Objectives / Intentions:

By the end of the lesson students will:
Learn about the positive impact of vaccination and immunisation on public health.
Know that most cases of cervical cancer are preventable through a 3 dose vaccination likely to be
delivered in schools.*
Know that cervical cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) and that it is other types of this
virus that cause genital warts.
Be aware that practising safer sex or choosing to abstain is still essential.
* Please refer to the guidelines issued by your local PCT or Health board for implementation process in your area.

Key words: Vaccination Immunisation Cervical Cancer Virus Genital Warts Malaise

Activities / Phases

Starter
Introduction
the big picture

Episodes

Learning Style Resources

Timing

Discuss learning objectives and expected outcomes

with the students. Explain that the lesson is about
vaccination and a particular cancer. The overall
aim is for students to understand how to protect
themselves. Ask the students to think about what
they know about vaccination and to hold it in their
mind or make a note: they will be able to see if they
have learnt anything by the end of the lesson.

Listening

3 minutes

Using Source 1 have a short discussion about Susan

and her story. Susans husband had also died. We
dont know how. Explain that people who survived
smallpox were often facially scarred.

Listening

Source 1
Susan Palmers
Diary Entry

10 minutes

Teaching Notes
1

10 minutes

ACTIVITY 1

New information

ACTIVITY 2

New information.

Ask the class to stand. Then one by one ask 90%

Kinaesthetic
of the class to sit (for example: in a class of 30 3
Visual
to be left standing). Those standing represent the
average number of people who will have died if they
had contracted smallpox in the 18th century. It could
have been as high as 20% i.e. twice as many. Repeat
the exercise for the UK today by asking the whole
class to stand again. Pause, everyone can sit down.
Smallpox has been eradicated. Ask the students why
they have done this exercise. To demonstrate that
smallpox was a highly infectious disease that caused
widespread fear and affected a large number of people.
Due to vaccination it has been completely eradicated.
Teaching Notes 1 provide further explanation of
the effects of small pox.

Teaching Notes 1
Smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases the world has
ever known.
It killed millions of people every year.
Few people reached adulthood without having caught smallpox.
Fatality rates were often around 10%.
At the end of the eighteenth century, smallpox caused 20% of all
deaths in Glasgow.
Nine out of ten people who died of smallpox were under 5 years
of age.
In 1967 the World Health Organization undertook an intensive,
worldwide vaccination campaign.
Smallpox is the first, and so far the only, disease we have ever
eradicated from the Earth and it was thanks to vaccination.
Teaching Notes 2
The diseases students are likely to have listed may include,
Measles / Mumps / Flu / Cholera / Meningitis / Polio / Typhoid
/ Hepatitis this list is not exhaustive

Activities / Phases

ACTIVITY 3

Making sense of
New information

ACTIVITY 4

New Information

Conclusion
Review and consolidation

Episodes

Learning Style Resources

Explain that there is a new vaccine against human

papillomavirus (HPV), the virus which can cause
cervical cancer. Other types of this virus can also
causes genital warts. Remind students that the
HPV vaccine is now part of the school immunisation
programme.

Reading
Listening

Optional SRE extension opportunity:

Split the class into groups of 4-5. Ask each group
to think of one other STI. List them on a board. Talk
about how to stay safe and protected against the
diseases listed. Stress, the only way to be totally
safe from STI is to abstain from sex. Unprotected sex
exposes both people to disease. It is safer to use a
condom.

Timing

Source 2
10 minutes
Vaccination and
Immunisation
Fact Sheet
Teaching
Notes 2.
RSH HPV and
Cervical Cancer
The Basics
leaflet
IWB lesson plan
support

Split the class into groups 4-5. Distribute Source 2 Listening

and talk it through with students. Develop and explain Visual
as necessary. Ask the students to work in groups
to do two things: List diseases they know that can
be vaccinated against Share their experiences of
vaccination. Swap stories and information as a class.
Teaching Notes 2 examples of diseases students
are likely to be aware of.

Source 2
Vaccination
Fact Sheet
Teaching Notes
2

10-15
minutes

Summarise the learning objectives. Ask the class

to think back to the start of the lesson. Have they
learnt anything new about vaccination? Q&A: What
is the only cancer that there is a vaccine for? Tell
the class about the vaccination programme in your
own school.
Discuss with the class whether the objectives have
been achieved. If not, this is the time to make them
clear. Offer sources of further information include
school nurse drop in clinics. Optional Explain the
process of distribution and collection of consent forms
(girls only).

Optional
handouts:
Consent forms

5 minutes

NHS leaflet
Arm Against
Cervical Cancer.

Source 1:

Susan Palmers Diary Entry

Jack was but five years of age and my eldest child when he first showed signs of the fever. It was with a
feeling of pure dread that I bathed his little head and body with a wet cloth to cool and quieten him. He was
afraid and took to his bed that night most out of sorts.
My sisters young boy had shown the same malaise but seven days earlier when she and her children had
visited us. Her son had not wanted to play with Jack and my younger child Arthur when in usual times he did
so with such great vigour! The boy seemed feverish and flushed; and was weak when trying to join in their
games. I commented to my sister that he was looking unusually weary when they left us.
For days on end Jack would take only sips of water. He moaned in his sleep and thrashed around the bed that
he shared with his young brother, Arthur. Arthur himself, being only two years of age, was very bemused by his
brothers infirmity. He tried to rouse Jack from his slumber and stroked his brow to comfort him.
When in brief moments Jack did awaken, he made complaints of pains in his head and back. It was then that
the sickness started thank the Lord that I knew not what was next to come.
Pink spots appeared on Jacks face, arms and legs. These grew bigger in the days that followed; gradually
becoming blisters which looked fit to burst. Jack at times was quite delirious with fever and could not be
calmed by any of my methods.
Then, days later, when I felt truly despairing, my worst fears were realised, and Arthur too seemed to have
been blighted by this infernal disease. He lay exhausted next to Jack, both of them gripped by the fever and
covered in blisters too tiny and weak to fight the malady which had taken over their bodies.
I am certain I appeared quite insane with grief when they removed both Jack and Arthur in their tiny closed
boxes. To lose two such precious lives so soon after my husbands death is unbearable.
I find myself so consumed with sorrow that I am not certain I have the wherewithal to continue in this life
without my boys. But I must go on for the sake of my unborn child. Weary as I am it is all I have left

Source 2:

Vaccination and Immunisation

Fact sheet

Vaccines are a way to protect the body against certain diseases. The majority of vaccines are delivered by
injection; however a few vaccines are delivered orally. They stimulate the bodys natural defence mechanism,
the immune system, to generate a response called antibodies, which will protect against infectious diseases.
Immune System
The body has natural barriers to infection.
This defence system means that the body produces antibodies and specialised cells in the blood to fight
disease.
Different diseases cause the body to produce different antibodies.
How do vaccinations work?
Vaccines work by stimulating the body to produce antibodies against disease using the contents of the
vaccine to mimic the disease. This is active immunity and if you are exposed to the virus or bacteria later in
life, your body will remember and produce antibodies even quicker than before.
Boosters
A booster is an additional dose of vaccine to make the body produce a top-up of the antibodies. This is
because the bodys immunity against some serious diseases does not last forever.
Vaccination
Immunisation (being vaccinated) helps to protect against some diseases without you having to be unwell
first.
Vaccines contain materials which stimulate your bodys defences but do not usually cause spreadable
infections.
Immunisation protects the body against some diseases by triggering antibodies that can control an
infection quickly.
Vaccines protect us from infectious disease by raising our immunity.
The main aim of immunisation is to protect the individual receiving the vaccine. A large population of
vaccinated individuals is less likely to cause the spread of the disease or virus. This in turn reduces the risk of
unvaccinated people coming into contact with infectious disease. This is called herd immunity.

This campaign has been produced by The Royal Society of Health with funding
from Sanofi Pasteur MSD. Sanofi Pasteur MSD has reviewed this article/item
for accuracy. Editorial control remains with The Royal Society of Health. Correct
at time of print July 2008