Unit 7 (Primary school, Class 7) – Is what I want also what I need?
Living Democracy » Textbooks » Exploring Children’s Rights » Part 1: Lesson plans » Unit 7 (Primary school, Class 7) – Is what I want also what I need?A Lesson plan
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Key question/lesson topics |
Main activity |
Resources |
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Lesson 1 |
What are my wants, desires and wishes? |
The pupils become aware of their wants by explaining them to each other. |
Pictures to form pairs of pupils. |
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Lesson 2 |
What do people need? What would be nice to have? |
The pupils learn to distinguish between wants and needs, and between basic needs and needs for self-fulfilment. |
Old magazines, scissors, glue, paper, string, clothes pegs. |
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Lesson 3 |
What are wants? What are needs? |
The groups or class decide upon ten important wants and needs. |
Material supplied by the pupils. |
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Lesson 4 |
Do children’s rights match our ideas of wants and needs? |
The pupils compare their suggestions with various children’s rights and create posters for a presentation on Universal Children’s Day. |
Copies of the children’s rights convention for each group, flip chart paper. |
B Background and educational objectives
In order to understand what children’s and human rights are about, pupils must reflect on themselves, their personal needs and desires. They must become aware of what they expect from life in their present situation.
Firstly, they should think freely about their wants and desires (no matter how crazy they may seem) and they should also be allowed to freely express them.
Secondly, they should clarify what the difference is, in their understanding, between mere wants or desires and real needs in life. This kind of choice will almost certainly guide them towards many of those rights in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
At every stage it is important that the teacher stimulates and moderates the discussions, yet he or she should take care not to intervene too much. It is important that he or she does not moralise or try to convince the pupils of his or her own values. Rather: in a well-guided discussion, the pupils will often discover and resolve conflicting concepts and values themselves.
An ideal time to work through Unit 7 would be the beginning of November. In this way, the posters that will be created in the fourth lesson will be finished and ready to be exhibited on Universal Children’s Day (20 November).
C Key questions for reflection on Unit 7
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Experiencing children’s rights |
Getting to know children’s rights |
Implementing children’s rights |
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Teacher |
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In what way have the principles of children’s rights been observed in the classroom and school community? |
What do the children know now about children’s rights? |
Learning how to take action outside school: What have pupils learned for their future lives? |
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This unit gives pupils the opportunity to express their personal wishes and needs. They experience being listened to and taken seriously. They learn to differentiate between basic needs of survival and things we desire. |
Pupils understand that children’s rights deal with basic needs that are necessary for survival. |
Pupils should become aware that they are confronted daily with key issues of life, and that society creates unequal conditions for its members in coping with these problems. They should learn to stand up for their wishes and desires, while maintaining a critical distance to them. |
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Pupils |
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How did I experience children’s rights in class? |
What have I learned about children’s rights? |
What kind of action am I able to take now? |
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I can only express my wants if I trust my fellow pupils and the teacher. I have learned that it is worth the effort to open up and talk about them and to see others do so too. |
I have learned that children’s rights focus on our most important needs: participation, development, survival, and protection and that they have a lot to do with my everyday life. |
I will try to pay more attention to the differences between wants and needs. I won’t hide or deny my wishes and dreams, but I will try to make them come true without doing harm to other people’s needs. |
D Procedure
Lesson 1
Introduction: The teacher informs the class that in secondary school, children’s rights will also be the theme of a sequence of lessons each year. The teacher asks the class what they remember from primary school and reviews the most important facts (see Unit 3, lesson 2 and Unit 4, lesson 1: the origin of children’s rights, the most important children’s rights, possibly their relation to human rights).
Announcement: This year, the theme will be “wants and needs”. The teacher gives a short description of the theme, collects examples from the pupils of each category and the most important differences. How could this theme be connected to children’s rights?
Forming groups: The teacher has cut pictures of beautiful cars, fashionable items of clothing or attractive holiday resorts into four pieces each and distributes these pieces at random among the pupils. The pupils must find their partners who also hold a part of the same picture: together they form a working group. If of three or five are needed to fit the total number of pupils, the teacher adjusts the number of pieces accordingly.
Each group elects a spokesperson and a manager. The spokesperson will speak for the group to other groups and to the teacher during the plenary session. He or she is responsible for transmitting the group’s opinion, not his or her own. A group manager organises the working process, integrates all the members and watches the time.
The groups receive the task of discussing the following points and of writing down notes on them:
- Which are your biggest wishes or desires today? What would make you particularly happy?
- What are your biggest wishes, dreams or desires for the future (e.g. when you are 25)?
- Can you remember your wishes and dreams when you were 5, 7, 9 and 11 years old? What were your biggest wishes then? What would have made you particularly happy?
- What kind of wishes and dreams do adults (e.g. parents, acquaintances, others) have?
Each group puts together a list of wishes and dreams that are ordered according to the various ages at which they were important. The list is written down in a table (on A3 or A2 size paper). The pupils can design the table themselves or the teacher can give them precise instructions as to the details and design, depending on the level of the class. The table should have a suitable heading that the pupils themselves should come up with.
The sheets of paper are hung up (as mini posters); a spokesperson from each group presents the results. The teacher could possibly give some input on aspects such as gender-specific wishes, realistic or utopic wishes etc.
Homework task for the next lesson (a few days later): Children collect cuttings on the theme of wishes and needs (from newspapers, catalogues, magazines etc.), clothes pegs (if there aren’t ca. 60 clothes pegs available at school).
Lesson 2
Introduction: Short recap of the previous lesson. The lesson was about our wishes now and when we were younger. Today we want to focus more on the differences between wishes on the one hand (that would be nice for our self-development if they came true), and (basic) needs on the other (which are essential for our survival). A few examples can be collected.
Further work in groups. The task is to discuss the following:
- What would we like to have? What would be nice to have? What would this allow us to do/be? (Wishes/desires)
- What do we really need and why? (Existential needs)
The pictures that have been brought to class as a homework task can be used to help produce spontaneous thoughts and ideas, especially to find ideas for wishes and desires.
After distributing an A3 sheet of paper to each group, the following tasks are given:
- Design a table with at least five (basic) needs (food, safety, care, friends, education, warmth etc.) and five wishes that would be nice for self-development (our own TV, travel to exotic places, a fancy car etc.);
- Cut out pictures to illustrate both categories and (possibly as a homework task) find further pictures. The pictures should be labelled on the back or beneath each one with either BN (basic need) or W (wish).
Lesson 3
The groups receive the following task: place all your pictures illustrating wishes and (basic) needs in front of you. Democratically select five pictures that best illustrate basic needs. In the same way, decide on five pictures that best illustrate the wishes that your group would most like to have fulfilled. Make sure that you take into account each member’s opinion! (To select the pictures, each group member can be given five little paper dots or tokens, to place on their preferred image. The ten pictures with the most tokens are chosen.)
Discussion and finding a consensus in groups. Next task: Take a piece of string (about 4m long) and ten clothes pegs. Hang the string up in an appropriate place and use the clothes pegs to hang your pictures up in this way:
- On the left: pictures of things that we need in order to live with dignity (basic needs).
- On the right: pictures of things that would make our life more pleasant or enjoyable (wishes).
- Some pictures could also be hung up in the middle between these two categories.
Presentations by the groups. In addition, a discussion could take place (moderated by the teacher) on various aspects (differences based on gender, or what counts as basic needs in rich countries and in poorer countries).
Lesson 4
Each group receives five blank A3 sheets of paper as well as a copy of the children’s rights (see appendix). The following tasks are then given:
- Take your ten pictures that you hung up last lesson. The focus will be on the five pictures that illustrate basic needs.
- Take turns to read the children’s rights convention aloud to your group. For each right that is read out, consider whether it relates to one of the needs on your five chosen pictures (or to one of the wishes on the five other pictures),
- Take the five A3 sheets of paper: On the left or in the middle at the top of the sheet, stick one of the five pictures that represents a basic need. On the right or at the bottom, write the children’s right that matches the picture. Some pictures may have more than one matching children’s right!
- Design and decorate the five sheets of paper as beautifully as possible (as a “mini poster”). They should be exhibited in the school building on 20 November (Universal Children’s Day).
Presentations of the five mini posters (per group) to the class. Concluding discussion on questions such as: How far did our thoughts on basic needs correlate to that which is said in the Convention on the Rights of the Child?
Clarification of the logistics of the poster exhibition to be held on the 20 November.
