Do you know the difference between the two types of diabetes? Here’s a quick refresher: type 1 is where your body destroys the cells that make insulin, which means that your glucose levels increase, potentially damaging your organs. It can develop at any time, but is often discovered in childhood and requires daily doses of insulin.

Type 2, on the other hand, means that your body doesn’t produce enough insulin, or doesn’t react to it. Symptoms can be controlled with diet, exercise and monitoring blood glucose levels. It is linked to obesity and usually develops in later life; it also accounts for 90% of all UK cases.

The disease is at once complex, common (it affects 4 million people in the UK) and scary – prevalence rates are rising and about half of cases are thought to be undiagnosed. So how can you discuss it with your students?

Primary

This video, from Diabetes UK, uses simple, child-friendly language to explain what type 1 diabetes is and how it affects the body. An extreme zoom takes viewers inside a person with diabetes: there we meet talking cells and flying insulin and glucose, detailing how treatment works and how to handle a diagnosis.

The charity has a huge number of resources aimed at children who have diabetes, including guidance sheets about exploring the outdoors safely and taking care in cold weather. Advice includes wearing a diabetes wristband in case of an emergency and keeping a testing kit and snacks to hand.

The idea of testing blood and injecting insulin can be intimidating. Give your students a look at a day in the life of a diabetic with this pack from the International Diabetes Federation. It uses a cartoon strip to demystify the process of checking blood sugar levels, as well as offering advice on how to keep active and eat healthily. The image of a plate (showing how much of each food group should be consumed each day) can be blown up as a colourful poster for your classroom.

Healthy eating is a key factor in preventing type 2 diabetes (along with countless other diseases), and you can get your entire school thinking about diet with this professional development presentation for staff from the School Food Plan. It looks at the facts and figures related to childhood obesity – as well as some truly terrifying stats on how much sugar is contained in different drinks – before offering examples of good practice to share.

This detailed information pack, also for teachers, from Diabetes UK offers guidance to ensure that young people with type 1 diabetes are safe and supported in school. Topics covered include how to spot hypoglycaemia, how to help with blood testing and how to confront common myths about the disease.

Secondary

For older pupils, try this memorable – if, admittedly, quite bizarre – introduction to diabetes, which asks them to Think Like A Pancreas. The interactive site features an animated guide named Pierre Pancreas, who explains in detail (with help from musical friends) how type 1 diabetes affects the organs of the body.

And for an even more detailed look at the science behind the disease, these visual guides from ABPI Schools can be used as reference sheets to paste into pupils’ books or as posters for the classroom. They cover types of insulin preparations, what an insulin chain looks like, and how obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The risk of obesity is an important topic to raise with secondary students – and this resource, from IntoFilm, about the 2014 documentary That Sugar Film is a good starting point. It explores filmmaker Damon Gameau’s experiment in consuming a high-sugar diet by only eating products marketed as “healthy”. Use it to prompt conversations about balanced diets, deceptive marketing and how to read between the lines of food advertising.

The danger of the white stuff is also covered in this collection of diabetes-related news articles and activities from The Day. One feature looks at how obesity and related illnesses now cost the National Health Service £4.1bn per year, leading sugar to be branded “the new tobacco”. Other articles look at the proposal to tax sugary products and the importance of sleep when it comes to warding off diabetes and other illnesses.

Finally, for a look at the most cutting-edge developments in the battle to cure diabetes, try these TED talks. Nutrition expert Jonathan Bailor asks “Can Superman End Diabetes?” (or rather, should we cut out sugar altogether?), while Dr Sarah Hallberg explains how her medically supervised weight-loss programme is managing to reverse the effects of the disease in patients.

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