SEL and behaviorSeasonal and holidays
Red Ribbon Week Activities for Middle & High School
Drug & Vaping Prevention
- Grades
- Grades 6–12
- Formats
- Google Slides, PDF, PowerPoint
- Pages
- 44
- Answer keys
- Included
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Make Red Ribbon Week meaningful for middle and high school! These Red Ribbon Week activities give grades 6-12 a complete 5-day drug and vaping prevention kit built on real 2025 survey data, accurate facts and plenty of refusal-skills practice, with no scare tactics. Use it for 10-20 minutes a day in advisory or homeroom, or extend each day into a full health lesson.
What's included
- Teacher guide with learning goals, materials and differentiation (support, on level, challenge)
- 5-day plan for Oct 26-30, 2026 with an advisory track (10-20 min) and a full-lesson track, plus daily discussion starters
- Teaching This Topic with Care: student privacy, what to do if a student shares something, and where to get help (SAMHSA National Helpline, 988, Poison Help, school counselor)
- Standards and contents page
- Pre-Check: students guess what teens really do, then compare with the real numbers
- The Story Behind the Red Ribbon: a 1-page reading about DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and how the week began, with vocabulary, timeline and reading questions
- Check the Data: Monitoring the Future 2025 and National Youth Tobacco Survey 2025 numbers with a bar chart and 8 questions (most teens do not use)
- 16 Myth or Fact? sort cards + sort mat and "bust the myth" rewrites
- Your Teen Brain: the prefrontal cortex, the reward circuit, tolerance and addiction
- 5 fact pages: Nicotine & Vaping, Alcohol, Cannabis, Prescription Pill Misuse, and Fake Pills & Fentanyl (calm, accurate, with overdose signs and what to do)
- Fact Finder jigsaw organizer
- How Products Are Sold to Teens: 8 marketing techniques + practice
- Fictional ad gallery (influencer post, seltzer ad, a pill seller's message, gummy package) + ad analysis chart
- Flip the Ad counter-ad project with a 16-point rubric
- Pressure: Where It Comes From (direct, indirect, internal, online) + sort
- 8 Ways to Say No, passive vs. assertive vs. aggressive practice, and refusal script practice with an observer checklist
- 6 fold-over role-play cards
- 16 scenario task cards (parties, online, team, family, work, helping a friend) + recording sheet
- How to Help a Friend + practice, a support plan and a cut-out help card
- My Red Ribbon Promise: an optional personal pledge in our own words
- 2 classroom posters: Not Everyone Is Doing It and Say No Your Way
- Spirit week ideas (free, teen-friendly) and 6 morning announcement scripts with next-day trivia questions
- 6 exit tickets
- 2-page quiz (15 multiple choice + 5 short answer)
- Complete answer keys
How to use it
Use it during Red Ribbon Week (October 23-31) in advisory, homeroom, health, school counseling or SEL classes. Each day has a 10-20 minute core page, an exit ticket and a morning announcement, so the whole school can take part. Health classes can stretch it into a 7-8 day unit with the counter-ad project and quiz. Print and go: just cut the card sets. Every activity uses fictional people, so students are never asked about their own or their family's substance use.
Skills practiced
Reading real survey datacorrecting the "everyone does it" mythfacts about nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and prescription pillscounterfeit pills and fentanylrecognizing an overdose and getting helpmedia literacy and ad analysisrefusal skillshelping a frienddecision making FACT-CHECKED Facts and numbers come from NIDA, Monitoring the Future 2025, CDC (including the Youth Risk Behavior Survey), the FDA's 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey, NIAAA, SAMHSA and the DEA, with sources printed on the reading, data and fact pages.
