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Making Sense of World Conflicts

Sudan: Crisis in Darfur

Iraq: War and peace

Rights and social justice

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Water

Welsh language

Lesson plan: Futures

From Making Sense of World Conflicts online resource

Age group: 14–17

Objectives
Learning outcomes
You will need
What to do

Objectives

• To think constructively about our global future.
• To develop empathy with other communities.

Learning outcomes

Pupils will have:

• examined, hypothesised and discussed non-fiction material.
• developed skills of enquiry and communication.

You will need

• Source material: Copies of one of the case studies – Sierra Leone, Manchester or Cambodia – for each pupil pair.

What to do

Starter

1. Give pupils as individuals or in pairs one of the case studies.

• Sierra Leone
  Children’s radio in Sierra Leone – project supported by Plan International.
• Manchester
  Taking action against arms abuse: United Kingdom – news report and poem.
• Cambodia
  Campaigning for change – a report of the launch of the Control Arms campaign.

They should read the case study and highlight up to three actions that have been taken to bring about change for the better.

2. Take feedback and check that everyone understands their case study.

Activity

3. Pupils should then imagine that it is ten years in the future and that they are journalists visiting the country of their case study to find out what happened and how successful the people were in continuing to bring about change.

4. They can discuss what they think they find. If time, they then write a newspaper article dated ten years into the future reporting on the situation in the country and the success of the projects. They should include brief interviews and a picture.

5. Pupils then get into groups of three or four with pupils who have been looking at the same case study. They should pool ideas or read and discuss their newspaper reports.

6. Ask each group to list three or four things which (either in real life or in their newspaper articles) helped ensure that things changed for the better in their case study. Examples could include the fact that Patsy and Sheila took advice from people with experience of their problem (Manchester), or the fact that the concert was shown on television (Cambodia). Groups should feed their lists back to the class.

Closing discussion

7. If they wanted to campaign to change something, what methods and strategies could they use? How would they go about this?

From Making Sense of World Conflicts online resource