I am a little handicapped in my comments in that I do not know what
age 5th and 6th graders are. Perhaps  someone can enlighten me.

A  group of collegues and I are devising an educational
package about breastfeeding for 5-14 year olds. This week ( national
breastfeeding week) we took it out to 4 schools for the first time
and taught about  500 young people about the benefits of
breastfeeding.
To give a rough outline. We took classes of about 30 children for
about an hour. They did a pre visit evaluation and then , in groups of
5 or 6 were taken round 5 activities which lasted 10 minutes each.
After 10 minutes they moved on to the next activity. Activities were
manned by lay breastfeeding counsellors and health proffessionals
(self selected and many completely voluntary)most of whom had not
been involved in devising the activities. At the end of the hour
the children filled in a post visit evaluation. The evaluations were
designed to tell us about their base line knowledge, whether we were
getting our teaching points across and how much the children enjoyed
the visit.Three groups of activities were devised for different age
groups.
At this point I have barely had an opportunity to draw breath, never
mind drawing conclusions.It did become apparent the baseline
knowledge did NOT increase   with age.Differing rates of literacy and
varying frames of reference also affected the effectiveness of our
teaching.All the adults involved in teaching were thrilled to be able
to work at the cutting edge of breastfeeding education.
I should add that we got into the schools by approaching the
education department, who recommended us to individual schools. we
were interviewed by the head teachers and we offered a presentatin to
the staff before our visit.
I expect to continue working on this project for some time
( starting by sorting out the evaluation forms
which are currently littering my home!)and I am happy to discuss it
at any time with anyone who wants to know more.

To those of you who know me.I have changed my server and my Email
number but everything is not running smoothly.I suspect that I do not
always recieve my Emails.

Veronika Tudhope
Kilmarnock, Scotland