Lesson video

Hello, everybody.

And welcome to the unit.

How we can make a difference in our society.

I hope you're ready to learn, and if you can, please go and find somewhere nice and quiet away from any distractions.

Try and turn your phones off, if you are using a laptop or PC, or turn any notifications off if you're learning on your phone so you don't get distracted.

I'll meet you in just a moment and tell you what equipment you need for today's lesson, and a little bit more about these new series of lessons that we're going to be studying.

My name's Mrs. Baker, and I'm looking forward to working with you all over the next six lessons.

See you in a minute.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back.

My name is Mrs. Baker, and I'm here to take you through the next six lessons that's all about how to make a difference.

This is an excellent unit for those of you that are studying GCSE citizenship studies, because it will prepare you for writing your active citizenship project.

It's also a fantastic unit for those of you who aren't doing a GCSE, but just feel passionate about something and you really want to get involved to make a difference in something you believe in.

I'm going to give you all the skills and help you plan and be able to carry out a campaign or an activity that you really think can make a difference.

So let's get ready to learn.

Hopefully by now, you find somewhere nice and quiet, turned any distractions off when you're ready.

For today's lesson, you will need some paper to write on and some pens to write with.

If you've got some colour pens or some highlighters that might help as well, but they're not essential.

And of course, we'll need our brains and to be ready thinking, because a lot of these lessons over the next six units really, really are all about you guys coming up with your own ideas.

When it's your project, it's not going to be me or any teachers that you've got helping you outside of your own learning methods, telling you what to do.

This really does rely on you and what you're interested in.

That's what makes it such a fantastic unit to be working on.

So if you haven't got some highlighters or anything to write on, or with, just pause the video now and go and grab some, and those of us that are ready will make a move and see if we can get started, fantastic.

Okay, so given you a rough outline then of what the lesson will be like today.

We're going to start off looking at what the idea of active citizenship really is, because this is what you're going to be working towards.

What you should achieve with your project.

What skills do you need to develop and how confident you are at completing those skills? Because skills are something that just get better and better, the more you practise them.

And certainly you're going to get an opportunity to do that.

So let's starts thinking about what active citizenship really is? So, active citizens then.

Some of you may have been doing citizenship for a long while, maybe since year 7.

Some of you may be quite new to the subject, but let's remind ourselves of what this term really means.

So active citizen is someone who works towards making positive change in society.

Now this can be at a local level, for example, your town or your village.

It could be at a national level, so our country, or an international level, so you could actually join in with an international project that's going on and make a difference that way.

So, let's just get rid of me here, so you can read the entire unit.

"Active citizenship is a process to involve pupils in learning how to take part in democracy and use their citizenship knowledge and understanding to work together in trying to make a positive difference in the world around them.

An active citizen is someone who cares about their community enough to change it." And that's a quote from the Association for Citizenship Teaching.

And they sort of work to help teachers and promote the idea of citizenship teaching.

So it's really important that active citizenship involves the idea of learning and skills and knowledge, but also all about democracy.

You can see their key words would be positive difference.

So you're trying to make something better, you're trying to improve something.

And once you do it, you tend to get a bit of a habit for this, you tend to get quite sort of encouraged by what happens.

And once you use one project, you tend to use more and more.

So once you've done one of these things, you'll probably think, "Okay, I'm ready for something bigger and better." So when we're thinking about active citizenship then everybody.

In order to be successful, there are three stages of the process that link together, really.

First of all, we investigate.

So we have to gather that knowledge that we just looked at in the statement about active citizenship to know what we're going to be taking action on.

So we have to become informed about the project, about the topic or the focus that we're looking at.

We would need to research in a number of different ways.

We have to develop skills maybe to raise awareness or maybe to draw attention.

Perhaps we'll develop skills on organisation.

But we have to do this investigating stage first.

But because if we rush in just to make a difference, what we often find happens is the action doesn't work as well as it could do.

So stage 1, when you've got all the knowledge and you've carried out all the research that you need to, it's time to take your action.

So you use all the evidence that you've gathered and you create a plan and work out how you are going to raise awareness or how you are going to do something positive, how you're going to create that change for the cause or the topic that you're very passionate about.

And then, the final stage of active citizenship is actually to review and reflect, so to look at what you've achieved, what difference have you actually made? What evidence have you got to prove this, what was successful? And sometimes it's important to think about what you could improve for next time or what advice you'd give to other people, if they were given a similar project ago like you.

So if you were giving similar advice, if your project worked, but one then that didn't, and somebody came to you to ask for help and advice, you might be able to say, "Oh, don't make the mistake we did," or something like that.

And it's not necessarily about saying, "Oh, oh, a bit rubbish." It's about acknowledging that if you were to do this again, I do it even better.

And that could be quite hard because sometimes we look at something we go, "Oh, we've done really well.

This is really good." And we don't like admitting that it could be even better.

So that's a really important skill that we need to build up this skill of evaluating and seeing what was really good, but what if we did it again, we could make even better? So, first task for you, because it's times to get those brains working I think already.

Let's have a look about active citizenship that you may have already come across during your studies, okay? So, even if you haven't done much citizenship you should probably have come across examples of people, perhaps in the news or people that you know about in your local communities that make a difference that they create change, they make things better for people.

So I'd like you to draw a mind map and write a list of any campaigns or any active citizens that you are aware of, okay? So it could be a campaign that's taken place in the past, or that's happened at the moment, or it could be an active campaigner if that helps out as well.

So pause the video now and complete that activity.

Okay, let's see how you did then.

You could have anything on your mind maps, because some of this will be very local to you, perhaps people that you know in the local area, but some of it as well will be absolutely linked to the studies that you've done previously.

So I've just had a quick think about some of the people that we've mentioned already in the Oak National Citizenship lessons, and these might be some things that you've already learned about, or certainly you could go back through some of our lessons to find out about them.

So the suffragettes.

They took part in a campaign to allow women to get the vote.

Amnesty International for example, fought for human rights.

and you can find out about both the suffragettes and Amnesty International in lessons in year 8.

If you look at some year 8 work, you can find some lessons there.

Greenpeace.

They are campaigners for the environment.

Surfers Against Sewage.

Again, environmental campaigners and they are also mentioned in a year 8 scheme of work and lessons on global problems there, you can actually find Amnesty, Greenpeace and Surfers Against Sewage mentioned in those lessons.

Fathers 4 Justice.

They've done a lot of campaigning involves some big stunts, media stunts, they campaign for the rights of fathers once they're divorced.

Somebody who lots of you will probably recognise the great name of is Greta.

No older than some of you, no doubt.

And she started this massive movement and now talks to world leaders and has a lot of powerful contacts.

Again, environmental issues.

Nelson Mandela.

Many of you may well be aware of Nelson Mandela's claims and how he became the first black president of South Africa.

And Rosa Parks.

Lots of people know about Rosa Parks and the fact that she carried out a protest or a demonstration during the Civil Rights era in the USA in the 1950s.

So quite a big range of contemporary campaigns there and also some historical ones.

And hopefully, you've got some others on your mind map that you could add and share with people.

Okay, so over the next few slides, we're going to have a look at some case studies that are good examples of active citizenship.

You could think of your other examples as well.

Some of your local ones.

But as we read through these case studies, I want you to make a note of two points please, everybody, two points as we go through: How these active citizens went about creating change.

So the method that they used.

And do they have anything in common? Can you see any characteristics within them? All of these people that we're going to look at? Is there anything that's similar about them? Let's have a look.

So some of you may recognise this image.

This is Marcus Rashford.

He's 22 years old, plays for Manchester United.

Boris Johnson announced that the government would stop providing 15 pounds a week in meal vouchers, so those on free school meals over the holidays.

Now, Marcus Rashford campaigned against this and the government's decision was overturned and it was successful.

So he signed a big petition where he got lots of people to sign a big petition and he wrote letters, held meetings, was interviewed by the media.

He talks about the fact that when he was younger, he was actually helped by this access to free school meals and what a difference it made to him as a student at school and how important this is, okay? So remember, the points that you were looking at, you're thinking about how they carried out their campaign.

I may have mentioned it already.

And you're going to look in a minute to see if there's anything similar with the next case study I give you.

So next, is Christina Adane, okay? She's 16 years old, and she created an online petition asking Boris Johnson, not to abolish free school meals with children during their half term and summer break, which Marcus Rashford actually supported.

And 1.

3 million children in the UK received free school meals, including Christina, okay? So she actually went on to one of the online platforms that you can use to create petitions and asked that people signed it.

She talked about her own personal story.

And in the end, 1.

3 million children benefited from that, because they had access to free school meals again.

So Jamie Oliver then, some of you may recognise him.

He is a famous television chef, he's written many books, had lots of programmes on the television and he campaigned on a number of issues around school dinners, sugar tax, because he feels that people are becoming obese and sugar and cheap sugary drinks are too available.

And his hashtag is Had Enough or #Adenough.

So this is the kind of campaign that Jamie Oliver is well-known for.

One of the things he tackled about 15 years ago, so before you guys got to school I would think, was a very famous dish that was on many school menus called Turkey Twizzlers.

And they were used by many, many school canteens.

And Jamie looked at what was in these Turkey Twizzlers and found that they were extremely unhealthy and decided to take action around how unhealthy school dinners were from there and managed to get some changes into the kind of things schools were allowed to serve and started up the idea of healthy school meals for everybody.

So not chips every day, maybe some of you like that, maybe some of you don't.

I'm not sure.

Okay, so there's a very well-known person at the moment, Greta, campaigns that she'd started there.

School strike for climate change, United Nations Climate Change Conference she attended and spoke at.

The United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019.

And she'd even had a term sort of named after her known as the Greta Effect, meaning that she started something and now there's a lot of people worrying about the environment, especially young people and it's just been called the Greta Effect.

It's like a social movement a social comment called the Greta Effect.

So she takes on all different forms of action, as you can see there.

But is there anything in common with Jamie and Christine and Marcus Rashford? Can you see anything similar about these characters so far? And finally, Little Miss Flint or Mari Copeny, okay? She started her activism at a very young age.

She was eight years old and she wrote a letter to President Obama asking to meet with him, because she was concerned over water pollution in her own town.

The town of Flint where she lived had changed water supplies and since then many families couldn't drink the water, shower without it burning their eyes or even play water games, because it could burn them and make them quite unwell.

The President wrote back to her and visited the town and he paid $100 million to repair the water supply.

Unfortunately, even that wasn't enough and families still suffered and had to use bottled water.

Many families couldn't afford this, Mari went on to start a fundraising page, which made over $250,000 and thousands of bottles of water were donated as well.

And since then, she actually developed her campaigning.

So now, she raises awareness of other countries that don't have access to safe water and promotes that.

And she still campaigns now.

So she was eight years old when she started and she's now in a teens.

So she's about the same age as you guys.

She's 14, 15.

And she's still carrying on with this activism that she started at eight years old.

So, what kind of action did she take? What methods did you use? And can you see anything that's similar about any of these people? Okay, so what did they all have in common then? Well, number 1 thing was they all had a clear goal or aim.

Every single one of these people knew exactly what they wanted to do.

And that's so important when you're going to take an action, knowing that by the end of this action, by the end of my protest, by the end of my campaign, I want to have achieved this.

More than one of them used the media to get support.

And sometimes that was the online media, the social media.

And sometimes it's what we call the traditional media like the newspapers or the television.

More than one of them use petitions to gain support.

And again, that could be a piece of paper that you recall people's details on, or it could be the use of the online petition forums that are now available.

And more than one of our individuals that created change had to convince the government or those in charge that they needed to support their ideas.

So it's really important when we're planning that we know who's going to make the difference, who do we have to get onboard? Who do we have to convince? Is it my friends? Can they do anything about it? Or is it somebody else that needs to change their attitude or start to do different things? So, another task for you guys? I would like you to match up these key elements of an important part of planning your active citizenship projects, okay? So you've got key elements on one area, one side, and you have what they mean on the other.

So from the conversations that we've just had and the information we've just read, you should be able to match those terms up.

So if you'd like to pause your videos now and complete that task.

Fantastic.

Let's see how you've done then.

So, knowing your target audience, e.

g.

The government.

This is really important.

You can target your information and action towards the correct people rather than waste time in having no effect.

So if you needed the government to change the law or reverse a decision, there will be no point in trying to campaign to get all your friends to change their minds, because it wouldn't matter what they think it's the government that has to make the decision.

Using the media.

This helps promote your campaign and allows other people to engage and support it.

It can mean you create a greater change or a larger awareness.

So it's really helpful to get more people to support you.

It can show that it's more than just you, that cares about this event.

So using the media, whether that's traditional media or new media, online media, that it can really help your cause and spread the word and in lots of cases using the media is free.

You don't have to spend money on getting posters printed or anything like that.

You can send that information out via sort of social media and things, and it can get to people a lot more quickly and also for free.

And they all had clear aims and goals.

So they knew exactly what you're working to and towards, and it keeps you focused and more likely to achieve your change in awareness.

So sometimes you can kind of get dragged off your main path when you're organising your active citizenship project, but it's really important to remember what your main goal is.

It's important sometimes to just focus on creating one change, rather than trying to do lots of different things.

It's best to make one thing happen really well then trying to do lots of little things that don't happen quite so well.

One really good impact can make a really, really big difference.

Okay, brilliant.

So, not all active citizenship is so well-known.

So while many campaigns and individuals who carry out active citizenship are very high profile and easily recognised, there's a great deal that goes on at local level and school level, that really makes a difference.

Over the next few minutes let's take a look at some of these projects as different examples of active citizenship.

When you complete your project for your GCSE, you will need to investigate, take action and reflect.

So see if you could find elements of students doing this in these examples.

So these are all real school students that have taken action, but they're not going to be as well-known as Marcus Rashford or Greta.

Okay.

So, making a difference.

This is primary school students.

So students younger than you making a difference.

So, quite a lot to read there.

I will give you a couple of minutes to sort of read it and then I'll summarise it for you.

But I'll read it through now, for those of you that would like to follow with me.

"We began to tidy our grounds, but we still had the issue of what to do with the litter.

We found the biggest problem was crisp packets.

Our RE teacher introduced us to a recycling scheme, TerraCycle, which gives one pence to a charity for each crisp packet you recycle.

We thought this would help us make a difference in two ways: Reducing the litter by crisp packet, as well as helping a local charity, Adapt.

We decided to find out more about TerraCycle and Adapt.

We were pleased to find out that rather than going to landfill, the packets would be recycled into garden furniture.

The money we raised would go to Adapt, a small charity that helps premature babies in a neonatal unit in the Leicester Royal Infirmary and General Hospital.

Several families in our school needed the help of this unit when their children were born.

We started to collect crisp packets.

Next we emailed churches and important people in our community, including Councillor Breckon at our local district council to get more people involved in our campaign.

We also wrote an article in our community's local newspaper asking for help.

Lots of organisations agreed to help, and we soon reached our first target of 10,000 crisp packets.

So that was 100 pounds.

So we raised our target to 20,000.

Counting all of the crisp packets was challenging.

With three weeks to go until the end of the summer term, we reviewed our project.

What impact have we had? Fewer crisp packets on the playground.

More than 20,000 crisp packets sent off for recycling.

Lots of people in the local community aware of the charity Adapt.

Lots of companies getting involved.

More than 200 pounds raised for Adapt so far.

We want to carry on collecting and counting crisp packets and helping our community.

We also want to look at what other types of single-use plastics could be reduced in school.

Overall, this project has been very successful and we feel we have made a difference in our school and beyond." So primary school students that started off just thinking they wanted to deal with the lifter, and suddenly, they're able to involve their local community as well and help a local charity.

Let's have a look in a little bit more detail then.

How did they go about it? Well, they were carrying out their investigation and they realised the biggest problem was indeed the crisp packet.

So, they found out how to raise money by recycling them.

Their action was to raise money for this local charity by recycling.

So they had that really clear goal in mind that they were going to raise money and they were aiming for 10,000 packets.

So they contacted other organisations and individuals that they thought could be helpful.

They reflected on the impact of their projects and they found that their environment was better, more people in the local community was aware of the charity and they're going to try and reduce other single-use plastics in their school.

So it's quite a longterm effect for this project that started off just looking at crisp packets.

And this is a really interesting use of active citizenship.

And you can see that just from starting on one straightforward topic with all the research that they did, they managed to make quite a big difference in their local community.

Let's have a look at another example.

Okay, so this example's all about creating a school charter.

"At the school, we want all students to feel safe and secure and to have rules in place.

Along with rules comes rights.

This is why I took it upon myself to create the charter with our main rights that we can maintain in school or out.

Me and my fellow classmates had gathered and decided to learn about our rights.

We had found and learned about the UNCRC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and researched our main rights.

With that, we have made a list and I started designing the charter.

I then introduced the idea to the school council.

They agreed on the poster and decided to display one laminated copy in every room of our school.

We figured this would be good.

So at any time, students could look at their rights as a child, everywhere they go.

Overall, my friends and I thought it brought colour to the classroom and made it look quite nice in general.

We also plan to review in the next academic year to see if anything needs changing, or if anything needs to be added.

We feel this school deserves to have the students happy and know that they have rights and how they can show, express and use them." So here we go.

We've got an individual working with his friends to say, "Well, there's rules, but there's rights as well.

And it's important that we all find out about them." And of course, this is from that idea of research, isn't it? So they investigated the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, made their list, their action they designed was a charter, the school council were the ones that could make the decision, then they supported them.

And when they're reflecting on it, they know why they've done it.

They think it's really important.

And they're also going to review to see if they can improve anything for next year.

So another really good example they have used that really clear method that we've talked about already, that research, having clear goals, working with people who can help get your active citizenship done with you.

So, what I'd like you to do now, if you can please, is to design yourselves a mind map and think about the skills that you would need to be an active citizen and create a really good active citizenship project.

So you might want to break them down into different areas, for example, communication and planning and research.

Or you might have some different ideas yourself, okay? Remember, skills come in all different forms and not everybody is good at everything.

So just have a think about all the skills, not just things that you're good at, at the moment.

So pause your video now and complete this task.

Okay, so let's see what you were able to come up with.

And I've got some examples.

You may have some, or some of mine, or you may have some completely different ones.

That's fine, because as we've already talked about, there's a range of skills that you could use.

So let's see what's coming.

Communication.

Important that we can communicate in different ways as well.

So that might be communicating on the phone, it might be communicating by email.

It might be communicating face-to-face, there's a range of things that you might be good at.

Critical thinking.

In other words, not just accepting what you're told, actually investigating during your research.

Analysis.

So working out what your information tells you, that's really important.

Evaluation.

So looking back at your project and working out what you've really done well and where you could improve.

Research is a big one we've talked about earlier.

You need to know how to research.

And again, research can be carried out in different ways.

And in fact, in a couple of lessons time, we'll be looking at just that, how we carry out research.

Teamwork.

It's really important when you're going to carry out a big project that you don't just work on your own, different members of your team will have different skills to you, so it's good to pull them all together and work together.

Confidence.

Have confidence in your own skills and ability, and the fact that you can actually make this project work.

Resilience.

So if something doesn't go right the first time, well, try again.

There will be a way that you can do it.

Create reasoned arguments.

So don't just say to people, "Well, I want you to do this, because I want it," give them an actual argument, give them evidence, tell them why they should support and create the change that you want them to.

Decision-making.

There'll be times in your active citizenship project, so you have to make a decision about whether you do things one way or in another.

And now this is where you're going to have to practise making those good decisions.

Representing the views of others.

Sometimes when you're doing a project, it's not just about what you want, but it's about what a number of people want.

So, how do you rate yourself at these skills? I'd like you to draw a chart that looks something like this and write your list in confident, not sure, or if you would need help, okay? So, have a think.

What skills are you confident in? What skills are you not so sure about in? And where are you definitely going to need help? So pause your video now and complete this activity.

Okay, so as we've already said, teamwork is one of the important skills.

And especially important, is because not all of you are going to have the same list of what you're good at and what you're going to need help at.

This is why examination boards ask you normally work in small groups when you think about who to work with, your teacher may suggest your group, or you may be able to choose one for yourself.

It's important to choose the people that have skills that work with yours rather than just your friends, otherwise, your project may not be so successful.

So this is one of the important skills as well about knowing who you're going to be good at working with and who has skills to compliment you rather than just going for people that you like working with.

It might not be the same person.

So, what skills do you have then? We've got our skills list here.

I'd like you to look at your mind map and the list that we've already talked about and highlight the skills that you're confident with, or look back at the ones that you've put in your table that you're confident with, okay? Now in a different colour, suggest some people who have skills that you are not confident with, but they are, because these are the skills that the exam board are looking for when they mark your work, okay? So, pause your video now and see what your confident with and where you know someone else can help you.

So that was our last activity for today's lesson.

Well done everyone.

Hopefully now, you've got an overview about just what active citizenship is all about.

Now is a great chance and opportunity for you to start preparing for your own research and those projects that you'd like to be taking part in.

This really is an exciting opportunity for you to find something that you feel really passionate about, because I know what young people are like in all of the classes that I've taught, everybody cares about something.

Lots of people often share the same ideas, but some of you might have something really unique and special for yourselves that you think is really important to you.

So now is the time to start thinking about that and finding out more about how you could do something to help that cause.

So, as a takeaway task for you, something to be doing in your own time, I'm suggesting that you think about an issue you'd be interested in taking action on.

And if you're doing your GCSE in citizenship studies, make sure you look at the specification, the examination specification, so otherwise, what you have to learn in the classroom, because you do have to link any active citizenship you do to areas of the curriculum you've been studying.

But to be honest, the curriculum's so broad, most of the things you'll want to do really do link to these areas.

And then, talk to others in your class to see if they're interested in the same issues as you are, because that will help you when you start to form your teams. It's easier if you're all working together on a project that you really care about, because you're definitely going to want to make sure it succeeds.

So, I really hope that I've kind of whetted your appetite now to learn more about how to make this active citizenship project really successful.

I'm hoping that you're absolutely buzzing with ideas of things that you could do and thinking about people that perhaps could help you as well.

So, it's time for me now to say goodbye and move on to think about what we're going to be doing next week.

So, if you'd like to share your work with us here at Oak National, please do take a photograph and ask your parents or carers to share it with your teachers and also share it online.

You can tag in @OakNational at Twitter and #LearnwithOak.

So love your photographs of any work that you've done today.

And any ideas of campaigns that you have already starting.

Make sure you tell your teacher, so they know about all the ideas that you've got and then, ask your parent or guardian, if you can share those with us here at OakNational, because I know for certain myself, I'd love to know what's going on out there and what active citizenship projects will be taking place.

So there's one last task for you to do before you've ended your lesson today and that is, just to take our exit quiz.

So if you could find the exit quiz everybody accompanied with this video, just to show us exactly what you've learned, that will be fantastic.

And until next lesson, I will say goodbye to you and thank you very much for all your wonderful, your work you've done so far.

Bye-bye for now then everybody.

Take care.