The Commonwealth Class education pack is a dynamic, exciting resource for teachers who want to teach young people about Commonwealth values like rights and responsibilities, protecting the environment and what people need to lead healthy lives. The pack contains cross-curricular activities, short films and discussion guides with learning outcomes that link to key skills, curriculum subjects and Commonwealth values. The activities can be used to support lesson planning and teaching across your curriculum. The flexible and wide ranging materials are mainly targeted at 7-14 year olds.

British Council has joined forces with The FA, Premier League + Football League to commemorate the 1914 Christmas Truce. The pack includes photos, eye-witness accounts + letters from soldiers. Perspectives from British, French, Belgian, German + Indian witnesses are included with activities for English, language, drama, art, sport, history + moral education. Schools are invited to design a memorial with the winner chosen by The Duke of Cambridge + Arsenal/ England forward Theo Walcott to be built at the National Memorial Arboretum. http://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/football-remembers

This Shakespeare Lives schools’ pack has been created by the British Council in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016. The pack celebrates Shakespeare as a writer who still speaks for all people and nations, addressing big questions and themes about the human experience and what it means to be a citizen in the twenty-first century. This pack encourages teachers and pupils to engage with some of the key issues, themes and ideas in Shakespeare’s plays, and to explore the ways they remain relevant and current in our lives today, wherever we are in the world. Specially designed to encourage learning across the curriculum, the resource is split into five key themes; Leadership and Power, Family and Relationships, Identity and Equality, Fate and Destiny, Justice and Rules. Within each themed section you will find a wide range of activities for pupils aged 7-14. These can be used as starting points in individual lessons or as elements of a cross-curricular project, which could be carried out with a partner school overseas. Shakespeare’s plays have been staged many times since they were written over 400 years ago, and there are still so many different ways of interpreting his work. Each interpretation will draw out different themes and ideas. We hope you and your pupils will enjoy exploring the ones we have developed in this pack, which is available to download now.

Acting as an excellent layman’s introduction to the origins of one of the most common languages on the planet, &‘History of the English Language&’; demonstrates how language changes over time, and presents England as being multicultural right down to its roots.

Macbeth - Act II, Scene 2, and Act V, Scene 1 - Murder and sleep-walking scene. Original Description: Murder and Sleep-Walking Scene ‘The excerpts from Shakespeare have been filmed in order to enable those who have no opportunity of attending performances of Shakespearean plays in a theatre to see how the various parts are played by leading English actors and actresses.’

Julius Caesar - Act III, Scene 2 - The Forum Scene. Original Description: These excerpts from Shakespeare have been filmed in order to enable those who have no opportunity of attending performances of Shakespearean plays in a theatre to see how the various parts are played by leading English actors and actresses.’

This Shakespeare Lives schools’ pack has been created by the British Council in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016. Specially designed to encourage learning across the curriculum, the resource is split into five key themes; Leadership and Power, Family and Relationships, Identity and Equality, Fate and Destiny, Justice and Rules. Throughout the pack you will find a variety of participative activities for pupils aged 7-14. These activities can be used as starting points in individual lessons, as elements of a cross-curricular project which could be carried out with a partner school overseas, or as standalone activities.

Nepal is one of the hilliest countries in the world. Most of the population live in very remote areas, so many grow their own food. But growing enough to live on is a real challenge. At Shree Sitaram Primary School in Dalla, western Nepal, many children come to school on an empty stomach. The village is extremely hard to reach from the capital, Kathmandu. There’s no electricity and the nearest shop is a six-hour walk away. The children have four hours of lessons before they get their school lunch. But first, the food has got to reach them!

In 2014, the Commonwealth Class project produced this exciting pack to celebrate the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The pack contains cross-curricular activities, short films and discussion guides with learning outcomes that link to key skills, curriculum subjects and Commonwealth values.

In China, young people hoping to go to university must do well in the notoriously difficult entrance exams, the ‘Gaokao’. Ma Li, age 18, is one of the 9.15 million Chinese high school students about to start studying for the exams. It’s a long, hard road, and both Ma Li and her family will have to make sacrifices if she is to do well. Follow Ma Li’s progress and find out why China’s university entrance exams, the ‘Gaokao’, are said to be the toughest in the world.