British Values - Attitudes to Immigration in Britain - Team Task Presentation

My class were working through a unit based on our school community and Britain overall. I was becoming very concerned that in the political climate of Brexit, some of the students were beginning to repeat misinformed, ignorant and even bigoted opinions that they had picked up elsewhere… so I wanted them to consider immigration over time from the view of an outside observer. This worked a treat and I was especially careful to let students lead discussion, with me guiding/asking questions as needed. The information is something I’ve adapted from BBC timelines. If you have access to computers, students could do this as a research task instead.

My class completed this teamwork task based on immigration to Britain over time and the attitudes that people were met with when they arrived. The opening starters really encouraged discussion and allowed us together to respond to negative ideas about immigrants. Then, students worked in groups of 4 and read each page as a group, breaking down who was coming to Britain, why and if the reaction was positive or negative. They presented this in different ways - it was quite open ended. One group presented this on a scale of a great reaction (Notting Hill carnival) to terrible (race riots) - depending on the class, you could explicitly ask for this as the open-ended nature might be too tricky for LA/SEND students. It’s also possible to differentiate if you have a weaker group by taking out some of the sheets as this is a lot of ground to cover for some.

At the end, we talked about why the British reacted this way and linked this to our starter. All in all, this prompted some really interesting discuss and allowed some students to break down misconceptions of other students too. I used this with year 7 but I think this would with KS2 right up to KS5 classes if adapted slightly.