Quakers in Britain develop resources to support children and young people to develop the skills and understanding we all need to be peacemakers, whether in our own lives or in the wider world. Linking to the curricula of England, Scotland and Wales these lessons and resources combine fun with critical thinking about issues of peace and justice. Produced by Quaker Peace & Social Witness
Quakers in Britain develop resources to support children and young people to develop the skills and understanding we all need to be peacemakers, whether in our own lives or in the wider world. Linking to the curricula of England, Scotland and Wales these lessons and resources combine fun with critical thinking about issues of peace and justice. Produced by Quaker Peace & Social Witness
This fun assembly from the Teach Peace pack explores the ideas of conflict, cooperation and compromise through the simple story of two mules. A great way to start talking about conflict not just as a danger, but as an opportunity.
From of the Peace Education Network
The theme:
This lesson asks a simple question: should we make polluters pay? In exploring this global citizenship question, students will encounter a wealth of cross-curricular learning experiences and outcomes with learning for sustainability at the heart.
Teachers can curate a lesson by choosing from 24 activities covering numeracy, literacy, speaking and listening, creative expression, science, geography, critical thinking, mapped onto the curricula of England and Scotland and Wales.
Learners will encounter concepts including the polluter pays principle established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1990 and the loss and damage fund established at COP27, and use images and data to understand how these ideas apply around the world.
Structure:
The activites are structured in four sections:
Introductory stimulus | by encountering the Make Polluters Pay exhibition and forming personal responses, students begin to consider the themes of the lesson.
Teacher explanation | a series of explanatory activities helps students formulate enquiries and understand the background issues such as climate change, loss and damage and the “polluter pays” principle.
Developing understanding | a menu of activities help learners consolidate and deepen their understanding of the difference in responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, evaluating who should pay.
Conclusion and expression | students use their own judgement and creativity to express their views on a fair way to help people facing loss and damage.
Why teach this lesson?
In 2022, governments across the world agreed to establish a loss and damage fund to compensate those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. The term “loss and damage” describes the irreversible harm climate change is causing to people and communities. To this day the loss and damage fund remains significantly underfunded; this is why campaigners are on the streets chanting “make polluters pay”.
Campaigners are calling for the fund to be filled with money from those that caused the climate crisis. Based on the “polluter pays principle”, the idea is to tax polluting companies, utilise this revenue to fill the fund and help those facing climate catastrophe.
These lesson materials are based on an exhibition that has toured the UK and has helped people understand and engage with the issue of loss and damage. This exhibition uses examples from around the world to illustrate communities facing painful loss and damage alongside exemplifying voices that have inspired hope and lead to positive change in the face of the climate crisis.
This lesson will enable cross-curricular learning of sustainability , unpacking the polluter pays principle which signifies an opportunity of hope and justice during difficult and uncertain times, discussing and evaluating the polluter pays principle can provide a starting point in helping to tackle climate anxiety among students.
Published on the centenary of the first International Congress of Women on 28 April 1915, this two-lesson sequence allows students to explore independently the wide range of activities women were engaged in during World War I (WWI) and ask, are women the real peacemakers?
Students will become experts in the stories they discover about women who strove for peace, supported the war, worked, campaigned for suffrage or tried to help the victims of war.
Aim: to show how things can go wrong when we act in anger.
From the Teach Peace Pack, this assembly uses the tragic story of Gelert, Prince Llwelyn's loyal hound, to explore the dangers of acting in anger.
Suitable for students aged 15-18, the lesson explores the ethics and legality of armed drone strikes following the “targeted killing” of British citizen Reeyad Khan in Syria in August 2015. This was Britain’s first use of “self-defence” as justification for a drone strike.
Go to www.flykitesnotdrones.org for more information and resources about Fly Kites Not Drones.
Aim: To understand and critically respond to the different moral and legal questions raised by armed drone strikes.
• To give students the chance to practise their speaking and listening skills, including
articulating their own views on drones and listening to the viewpoints of others
• To gain an insight into how international law and human rights develop
• To investigate and offer reasoned views on ethical issues surrounding drone strikes
“The best thing we’ve ever done together as a school community”
Moya Richardson, Associate Head Teacher, Our Lady’s Catholic Primary School
This whole-school resource pack contains everything staff and pupils need to explore how they can build a peaceful world. You can then develop the attitudes, values and skills needed to create it. Your Peace Week can be run at any time. It can be an exciting way to start a new term, or a positive way to celebrate the end of the school year.
Includes:
*curriculum linked content for Scotland, Wales and England
tools to help you organise
lesson plans
resources
staff training materials
Peace Week was created by the Quaker Peace Education Programme with help from schools.
Remembering for Peace
Aim: To encourage children to think about the impact of war and to consider ways of remembering for peace.
Cofio dros Heddwch
Nod: Annog plant i feddwl am effeithiau rhyfel ac ystyried ffyrdd o gofio er mwyn hyrwyddo heddwch.
This assembly has been created ahead of the Peace Education Network's updated edition of the "Teach Peace" pack. It explores the question of what we remember about war and why, looking at the significance of the different colour of poppies.
Aim: To understand how different people think and feel about armed drones and why.
Summary
In this workshop participants will meet people with different experiences of drones. Through text evidence, imagery and drama, participants will explore these different perspectives and
think about human rights and the emotional impacts of drone warfare.
Objectives
To gain an understanding of the effect of drones on different people’s lives.
To practise moral reasoning based on evidence.
To use drama and reflection to identify and empathise with different people’s point of view.
This is Workshop 2 of Fly Kites Not Drones and can be run as one session or as two shorter sessions. See more at www.flykitesnotdrones.org
Pupils make their own kites and send your message of hope for peace into the skies…
In Afghanistan, where flying kites has great cultural significance, the perfect kite-flying weather also provides perfect conditions for the drones, whose bombs have left children fearful when they play. Afghan Peace Volunteers began Fly Kites Not Drones as a nonviolent way to call for peace.
This is Workshop 4 of Fly Kites Not Drones. See more at www.flykitesnotdrones.org
To end all wars?
This INSPIRE project plan is for a 30-minute introduction to World War I Remembrance. It can be used as an assembly or at the beginning of a poppy-making workshop. You could use it during Remembrance or, better yet, for thinking about peacemaking in your school. It also contains a challenge: what will you do to make peace in the next 100 years?
The content can be used with ages 9 and above. The follow-up poppy-making activity is for all ages.
2020 NOTE: The Collateral Damage Project is now over but, people are doing window displays of white poppies and posting online
Aims:**
**
to explore the history of war from World War I to the present day
to inspire action to prevent war and build peace
(extension) to make a poppy as a symbol of Remembrance for peace.
UPDATED FOR 2018
A secondary school teaching resource. Through contemporary stories, told through real sources, classes can use Conviction to reveal the dilemmas people faced 1914-18 such as conscientious objection. Accompanying lesson plans explore not only what happened, but moral questions which remain relevant today.
Features lessons on:
Emily Hobhouse- Hero or traitor who tried to make peace
Albert French, 15 ear old sodldier
Harold Stanton, “absolutist Conscientious objector”
Women and Families
Corder Catchpool, pacifist
Henry Williamson, the nature loving soldier
This is the sister pack to the primary-focused Conscience.
Order hard copies from the Quaker bookshop.
**Lesson 3 of 6 sample lessons from the Razor Wire & Olive Branches pack.
The history of conflict in what today is Palestine and Israel is a complicated, but in this lesson helps students can get to grips with it. The main resource here is a timeline, but there are lots of ways for students to engage with it.
The activities can help to learn the chronology of key events, but also start to evaluate their significance. More than that, it is a chance to reflect on how identity informs the way we see history. What are our parallel narratives?
Using critical thinking, Maths and Citizenship skills, learners will explore a simple question: how should the government spend its money to work towards a safer world?
The British government spends roughly £45 billion on defence, but groups like the International Peace Bureau question whether this really makes the world safer. Your class will vote on the best way to spend the money.
Includes Worksheets.
A short assembly is also available to download.
**Aim: **To gain an understanding of drones and how they affect children’s rights.
This circle time lesson explores the life of Aymel, a boy from the village of Dadal in Afghanistan. Pupils will learn about human rights and the effect armed drones had on Aymel’s life. The true story behind this lesson was shared by Raz, a member of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.
This is Workshop 1 of Fly Kites Not Drones and can be run as one session or as two shorter sessions. See more at flykitesnotdrones.org
**Objectives **
to understand a number of rights from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
to practise spoken language skills, listening and cooperation in their group
to explore empathy with people from a different culture
to understand what an armed drone is and be able to explain how it can affect
children’s rights
to recognise that a moral choice is made when a drone is used to attack people.
This interactive assembly from the Teach Peace Pack explores whether walls build peace using examples of real walls and barriers from different times and places including , the peace lines of Northern Ireland, the barrier around the Palestinian West Bank and oxen lining up to defend their young.
Follow-up actvities also allow learning to be deepened in the classroom.
Produjced by the Peace Education Network
Part of the Teach Peace pack, this assembly explores the extraoridnary life of Quaker Elizabeth Fry, the Angel of the Prisons, whose exposure of harsh conditions in Newgate's cells led to prison reform.
Aim: to learn about the life of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and her determination to change something she believed was wrong.
This assembly lays out the true story of Sadako, the girl who inspired hope after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima even after shed died from radiation poisoning. Part of the Teach Peace Pack from The Peace Education Network.
Aim: to explore the human cost of war and see how children, so often the innocent victims, can work together for peace.
This assembly is most effective if it is followed up in the classroom with the making of origami cranes carrying the children’s messages of peace. Some children may find the content of this assembly upsetting, so be aware of the need for sensitive follow up.
UPDATED FOR 2018
A primary school-focused teachers’ resource. Through contemporary stories, told through real sources, classes can use Conscience to reveal the dilemmas people faced 1914-18. Accompanying lesson plans reveal not only what happened, but moral questions which remain relevant today.
CONTENTS:
1: Conscience in WWI
2: Albert French (boy soldier)
3: Conscientious objection
4: The Friends Ambulance Unit
Print copies available from the Quaker bookshop.
How do war and the armed forces affect our lives? What is it like to join the military? To be trained? To experience armed conflict? What are the risks? What is the effect on everyday life? Using comic books, video, quizzes, maths and critical thinking, learners can explore these questions individually or as a class.
Hear from British veterans about the challenges they’ve faced
Useful for careers advisors who want students to get to understand what joining the military could mean
Learners practise a professional risk assessment
Analyse multimedia content from War School and the British Army
Reflect on what too much militarism may mean for society
More at war.school for the whole film
Explore 4,000 years of Afghan history. with this interactive resource suitable for the classroom or home learning.
It can be easy to forget that Afghan history didn’t start in 2001 with the U.S-British invasion following “9-11”. This interactive timeline can help students engage with the rich history of Afghanistan, both in the classroom and through virtual learning. It is designed to facilitate a range of activities including sequencing and sorting, group work and debate, independent research and even a cooperative ‘human timeline’.
Students can explore both the chronology and connecting themes such as women’s rights, war and conflict and religion and culture. They can then evaluate which events are the significant and ask big questions like “can Afghanistan find peace?” and “Could military intervention have helped?”
Curriculum for Excellence
Social Studies | SOC 4-06cI | I can describe attempts to resolve an international conflict and maintain the peace and can present my conclusion about how effective these attempts were.
Social Studies | SOC 4-06a |Having critically analysed a significant historical event, I can assess the relative importance of factors contributing to the event.
Curriculum for Wales:
*Humanities: Human societies are complex and diverse, and shaped by human actions and beliefs
ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world.
Informed, self-aware citizens engage with the challenges and opportunities that face humanity, and are able to take considered and ethical action.
Cross-cutting theme: Human rights education and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
Qualification links:
Religious Education | A-Level | Edexcel: Religion and Ethics, Topic 3.1: War and Peace
Religious Education | KS4/GCSE | AQA Short Course: Religious, Philosophical and Ethical Thematic Study B: Religion, Peace and Conflict
GCSE History: Conflict and tension in the Gulf and Afghanistan, 1990–2009
Citizenship | GCSE | OCR: The UK and its Relations With the Wider World (3.2)
Citizenship | A Level | Unit 4: Global Issues and Making a Difference (Human rights; Conflict and its resolution).
Citizenship | KS4 | human rights and international law
A-Level History: (AQA) 2R The Cold War, c1945–1991
History | A-Level | OCR Unit Y321: The Middle East 1908–2011: Ottomans to Arab Spring