The KeyCode project (2020-1-FR01-KA201-080108) is funded, by the European Commission through the French National Agency for the Erasmus+ Programme, with the aim of addressing the challenges that young students face in consolidating their European identity.

The KeyCode project is funded, by the European Commission through the French National Agency for the Erasmus+ Programme, with the aim of addressing the challenges that young students face in consolidating their European identity.

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Teaching Resources

My rights


Duration
3/4 hours

Age Group
11 - 12
13 - 14
15 - 16

Objectives
Promotion of EU citizenship, EU and democratic values and human rights
Development of empathic behavior at school

Needed material
Post-it notes
Pencils/pens
Materials recommended by the source:
List of rights - available at https://historia-europa.ep.eu/sites/default/files/Discover/EducatorsTeachers/ActivitiesForYourClassroom/hr-resource-1-en_0.pdf
The United Nations video clip on human rights (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpY9s1Agbsw)
Convention on the Rights of the Child, available at
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx

Emotional Intelligence Areas
Self-awareness
Internal motivation

Description
My rights is an activity that engages students to reflect on human rights and develop an understanding of their rights and responsibilities. The main focus of the lesson is on the debate. This technique encourages students to listen to and understand different viewpoints of the same situation. Debaters have to create not only a solid argument but also be able to compromise in a disagreement and adapt their argument to better fit the scenario. To this end, they must research both sides of an argument. Debates and empathy are closely related. Listening is an important skill and a key component of both debates and empathy as it allows an individual to not only hear and listen to the words but also understand them, reflect on them and express their opinion.
Facilitators should set the ground rules that guide the discussion and debate process and adopt only those which have been commonly agreed upon by the majority. Students should be encouraged to collaborate to work on their arguments, justifications, and phrasing. Facilitators should also make sure that everybody is allowed to speak and encourage and positively reinforce constructive engagement in the discussion. Facilitators should not accept statements and opinions without supportive arguments and solid justification; they should reinforce positive messages. At the end of the activity, facilitators should review what was understood and learned from the debate, identify and work on sensitive issues raised by the debate. Participants should be encouraged to share their experiences and feelings related to the lesson and state how the activity can be improved.

Lesson Plan
1. Understanding rights Brainstorm what students understand by human
rights (What are rights really? And what do they represent for us?). Show students the short United Nations video clip on human rights available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpY9s1Agbsw. Give students the list of Human Rights (handout). Clear one wall in your classroom. Ask your students to choose one to three rights they consider very important to them and then write each of these rights on a post-it note. Get them in groups of four and ask them to share these post-its within their group telling how each right impacts their everyday life and then to stick them on the wall.

2. Categories of rights Ask students to group the post-it notes according to their themes/pattern and name each category (What are the different types of rights? Can we see a pattern in specific rights –or a categorisation of any kind?). Ask them whether they found this task easy or difficult and why.

3. Are rights exclusive in certain cases?
The activity focuses on the differences between specific groups’ rights (i.e. the rights of the child) and human rights. For this activity, get students into four groups of roughly equal size. Write the phrase on the board: ‘Rights are there to protect everyone and not just specific groups such as children’ on the board. Ask students to discuss it in their groups, express their opinion on whether they agree with this statement or not and why and, finally, report to class their opinions.
Optional: After the discussion, (if time allows) get students to improve their HRs wall with those rights that were not mentioned previously. To this end, the groups can access the following sites to get further information on the issue: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://historia-europa.ep.eu/sites/default/files/Discover/EducatorsTeachers/ActivitiesForYourClassroom/hr-resource-1-en_0.pdf) and the following resource packs
Convention on the Rights of the Child
(https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx)
UNICEF - Child rights and why they matter, available at
(https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/child-rights-why-they-matter)
Tell them that in addition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there are also conventions on the Rights of the Child, women, minorities and LGBTI. HRs are dynamic and new HRs can be added due to the needs of specific groups who have been so far ignored or have not been aware of their rights.

4. Debate
Tell students they are going to participate in a debate on the statement: ‘Rights are there to protect everyone and not just specific groups such as children’. Develop a list of ground rules to guide the discussion process and adopt only those commonly agreed upon by the majority (teacher and students). Review and post/display the ground rules before the debate and discussion.
Familiarise students with debate conventions if they are not used to them (ask students to use ‘I agree/ I disagree with‘ when starting their contributions. That will make them pick on what the previous speaker said. Teach students how to use reasoning and supporting arguments (Why do you say that? Can you give me a reason?), how to clarify concepts (What do you mean by that?) and how to show empathy (Is it always the case? / Would you argue the same if….?). Ask students to listen to others and allow everybody to contribute. Encourage students to maintain eye contact with their interlocutors.
Give students clear instructions on the debating procedure. Get students in two groups: the Affirmative (for) and the Negative Groups (against). Also, select the jury, two or three students, who will summarize and conclude the debate (the facilitator may be a member of the jury).
Ask each group to decide on two arguments. Split each group into two subgroups (each subgroup prepares one argument). Each argument should be supported by its justification (an example, explanation or description). Tell students it is important to consider the consequences of their aruguments if they are applied to a real social context. Students prepare their arguments and, then, they present them in 2 or 3 minutes. Be very strict on timing. Tell each group that they have to take notes on what the other group will present and identify weak points in their arguments.
Each group discusses the points the opposition made. They have to decide how to attack the arguments of the opposing team and demonstrate the error of the opponent's case. They prepare a persuasive and effective justification for why those arguments were wrong (refutation). Then each group presents their refutation.
The jury prepares and presents the summary and conclusions of the debate.

Follow up:
a. After the debate, talk individually with the participants and thank them for their contribution to the debate. Tell them they are entitled to express their own opinions on condition they show respect to others.
b. Students exchange their roles (the group who was against is now for and the other way round). Monitor the stages of the debate: the preparation of arguments, presentation and refutation.
c. Discussion on the story of Iqbal Masih (https://historia-europa.ep.eu/sites/default/files/Discover/EducatorsTeachers/ActivitiesForYourClassroom/hr-resource-4-en_0.pdf)

Assessment
Go through the main points of the debate and check what students learned from the debate.
What did you learn? What was the most exciting thing you learnt from this activity? Did it help you to understand the human rights? What else do we need to know to better understand them?

Ask students to reflect upon their debate experience:
How did you feel in both situations? Why?
Were the situations difficult to deal with? Why? Which was more difficult to handle? Why?
How do you show respect for others’ ideas, even if you disagree?
Conclusions: Reinforce positive messages by talking on the common set of values of the debate. Encourage students to think critically about current situations and look for realistic approaches.



TESTING AND ASSESSMENT