Citizenship at key stage 3    (Year 7-9)

• Before Human Rights Day itself, ask pupils to work in class groups to establish their understanding of human rights. Approaches could include: class or group brainstorms; use of stimulus material, eg newspaper clippings; presentations by pupils or the teacher on the articles of the Human Rights Act or on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; or pupils doing research using internet or printed resources.
• Groups discuss whether they should focus on one particular human right or on human rights more generally. Encourage pupils to use ranking exercises, eg Diamond nines, voting, surveying opinion, to decide which issues to explore further.
• Ask groups of pupils to discuss types of activity, eg assemblies, displays, workshops, presentations, guest speakers, and appropriate audiences, eg their own year group, other year groups, parents, pupils from other schools.
• Summarise preferred topics, types of activity and target audiences/participants.

• Set up a planning group of pupils and staff - pupils elect representatives from each class.
• At a meeting of the planning group, discuss suggestions made by pupils and determine which ideas can be incorporated into Human Rights Day events. The meeting could be chaired by pupils. Agree who should coordinate tasks such as investigating the availability of partners from other organisations and the wider community, and identifying individuals from within the school to lead specific aspects of the day's events. The planning group divides responsibilities between year/class groups. Representatives report back to pupils and staff, and within classes they negotiate and plan responsibilities and activities.

• Activities with a human rights focus may be integrated into subjects across the curriculum, eg by studying child labour in history, designing protest posters in art and design, reading poetry in English, examining questions of suffering in RE.
• Encourage year 10 or year 11 history students to research human rights issues, eg child workers in the nineteenth century. This can be compared with child labour issues in the present, and could include investigating the Human Rights Act or the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Pupils could design and organise a display of their findings, including information on relevant websites and case studies. They could also contribute to planning and facilitating a workshop to engage other pupils in active discussion about child labour, eg asking whether they want cheap trainers and clothing at the expense of child exploitation.
• Ask pupils to investigate the work of external organisations, eg the Amnesty International Junior Urgent Action Campaign. Suggest pupil-led assemblies on these topics for pupils' own or other year groups, and internet discussions.
• Invite year 7 pupils to work with year 6 pupils from feeder schools, to identify issues of concern to them. Focus on their rights on transferring to secondary school, eg freedom from bullying, harassment and racism. Plan a workshop, eg relating to the school's anti-bullying policy, to be jointly facilitated by year 7 and key stage 4 pupils for visiting children from a feeder school.

• Review with pupils - individually and in groups - their involvement in the Human Rights Day events and establish what was successful and what was less successful. Ask them to specify their reasons and record their evaluation for future events.
• Pupils could work in groups to design a human rights page for the school website, entering existing information, designing a discussion page and providing links to other sites.
• Consolidate learning by asking pupils to write a commemorative newsletter or an article for the local press, supporting their work with illustrations and photographs.