Greetings to all of our friends in Kafuro. We have heard that
there is the possibility of P7 returning to school on September 20th.
We hope that this works out and that you are able to resume your learning
before Primary Leaving Examinations.
Year 6 at Liss Junior School have begun their work on the wants
and needs learning that takes place in the UK every year and allows us to make
some comparisons with Kafuro.
Our first task was to give each pair of children the outline of a child and to give the outlined child a name. Next, we discussed what this child would need to grow up into a happy and healthy adult. The children were set the task of identifying twenty things that would help the child achieve this. At this point there was no input and the children could completely decide for themselves.
Once the pupils had completed their twenty things that a child
would need, they wrote them on post its and placed them in the middle of the
child. Next, they were asked to remove five of the things that the child could
do without – this reduced the items to fifiteen. This exercise was repeated
twice more and generated a lot of debate on each table as the children argued
over what should stay. Eventually, each group had five items left which they
shared with the rest of the class and compared.
Our next step was to introduce UNICEF wants and needs cards and perform a similar exercise. However, firstly the children were asked to divide the cards into three groups: those they thought were Most Important, Important and Least Important. Then, once again, Mr Stanley asked the pupils to reduce the cards down to just five, and the classroom became very animated as the children had to make some very difficult decisions over what should stay and what should go. It was interesting to see how the children made their choices compared with previous years. Although there were a lot of similarities, there were also some notable differences. This will be shared in a future blog post.
Once the pupils had completed this
exercise, they compared the five wants and needs they had left with the post
its they had created in the previious lesson. As a class, we then discussed the
difference between wants and needs.
Needs: the things that are absolutely necessary for all
children to have a happy and healthy life
Wants:the things that are nice to have but not necessary
for a full life.
We finished this first session by
discussing some key questions: Are wants and needs different for people in the
UK and Uganda? Why don’t all children in the world have what they need?
To the first question, the pupils
were quite clear that needs would be the same in both countries. However, there
was an acknowledgement that wants would be different. For example, a pupil in
the UK might want a Playstation or an Xbox, but for a pupil in Uganda, where
electricity is scarce in places, a new bike would be something that they might
really want. We were able to use Eben’s expertise as he was able to tell us
that growing up in Malawi there were often power cuts, so what was the point of
having a console?
The pupils were y not shocked that
children in the world didn’t have everything they need. We discussed some of
the reasons why this may be so:
- War
- Some countries don’t have enough money to feed
people
- Some governments are corrupt
- Exploitation of poorer countries by richer
countries
- Climate change
There was widespread disbelief in the
class that millions of people go hungry in the world when there is more than
enough food to feed everyone comfortably.
Next, the pupils looked at the needs
of children are protected. We studied the United Nations Charter for the rights
of the Child. It was interesting to see the children make links with their work
in the first session. One group were delighted to see that the right to play
was enshrined in their convention and felt that justified them placing ‘play’
in their final five cards.
In our next session we will be trying
to marry up each need from the first session with other rights in the charter.
