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You snooze, you lose? Sleep patterns in Canada
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Article: You snooze, you lose? Sleep patterns in Canada (PDF)
Objective
- To understand the need and importance of sleep for Canadians.
Method
- Calculate the average length of sleep for the class last night. Compare it with the results in the article. Do girls in the class get the same amount of sleep as boys?
- What was the average length of time it took to fall asleep? How many in the class woke up without the use of an alarm clock or someone waking them up? How many in the class sleep longer on the weekends?
- The article discussed major industrial accidents that have occurred as a result of sleep deprivation, but there are less severe effects that may happen as a result of lack of sleep. Think of your own experiences of when you have not had enough sleep. Discuss the incident and how you felt. Did you have the energy you needed? Were you alert?
- Discuss the importance of sleep to your health. Survey students to find out how many cut back on sleep when they need more time. Does the fast pace of our lives contribute to sleep problems?
- Our bodies go through a biological rhythm called circadian rhythm. There are two low periods in this cycle. The first low occurs between 1 and 4 a.m. and the second occurs 12 hours later between 1 and 4 p.m. Keep track of any daytime sleepiness that you have. After lunch do you often feel sleepy? What can you do to feel more alert during this time?
- Keep track of the number of hours you sleep over three nights. Do you often wake up in the middle of the night? Did you calculate a sleep debt for these nights?
Using other resources
- E-STAT, now free to Canadian education institutions, contains a wealth of data from the World Health Organization survey on the health behaviour of school-aged children, including children having difficulty getting to sleep, by age and country. You can find these data on E-STAT under the Topic ‘Health' in the CANSIM database, table 110-0048.
Please e-mail comments or examples of how you used this exercise in your class.
