Lesson video

Hello and welcome back to lesson five in this unit on where we are looking at how can young people play a role in an active society? Today we are going to focus on how can we make change happen? So we're going to look at how you, as young people, can bring about change in and around your local areas.

Now, as usual for this lesson, you are going to need a quiet working space and free from all distractions.

So whilst you find that area in space, hit pause in the video and then come back to me once you are ready to start today's lesson.

In today's lesson, you are going to need your mind.

You are going to be needing to be ready to think and you are going to need some facilities and some resources to write on.

So make sure you have something to write with.

And if you'd like to, just to make some of your work stand out that we'll be looking at later on in this lesson, maybe you can have some highlighters with you.

So again, if you need to go and grab that equipment, hit pause on the video.

If not, stay with me and we will introduce the three key objectives that we will be looking at today.

So today we are focusing on three questions, and those are the following: That, "What are change makers?" So we'll look at a key number of people and what they have brought about in terms of change.

We'll also remind ourselves "What is citizenship action?" and how you can be a part of that before we arrive at the conclusion of our lesson in looking at, "Why is it important to stand up for what we believe in?" So for today, just to start off, what I'd like you to do is have a look at those four names on the screen there for you.

You have Rosa Parks, Greta Thunberg, June Eric Udorie, and Malala Yousafzai.

Now, what I would like you to do is if you know anything about them, can you just write down what they have done in terms of their community or in terms for change? Also, if you do not know what those people have done, maybe you could hit pause on the video now, and you could go elsewhere and do a little bit of research yourself.

But it's really important to start off with people who have brought about change in the areas of which they are living and also around the world.

So you can hit pause now and you can complete the task on what do you know about the following four people, if you know anything? Jot them down, write down anything you know about them and then press resume.

And we'll go through some of the points of the people that you've looked at.

Okay.

So a little bit of feedback for you then.

With Rosa Parks, you might know that she is a leading activist for black people's rights in America.

Now in and around the 1950s, people who were black were persecuted for the colour of the skin.

Also, Rosa Parks being a female, also was in the minority here of having some rights.

Now in the 1950s, she chose to sit in a seat on the bus that reserved for white people.

And this brought about a massive change because she stood up for people who were black and decided to fight against the regime that said that black people had to sit in a certain part of a bus.

So she started what was known as the "bus boycott." And as a result of that, black people's rights grew.

With June Eric Udorie, okay? She started a campaign and wrote to a local Member of Parliament to stop the government from removing feminism from the A-Level political syllabus.

Now because of our actions, because she wrote to her local MP and got involved with it, her action resulted in a change of plan by the government.

So they reversed their decision.

Okay? So it doesn't have to be something massive here to campaign or protest or to stand up in terms of your rights.

Here with June, she believed that feminism was a really strong part of the syllabus and shouldn't be removed.

So because of her passion and her determination, she then got her her point across successfully.

With Greta Thunberg then, you might recognise the name that she is a leading activist for climate change.

And that she's been all over the world trying to deliver her message on what we should be doing in terms of pollution and changing the way that we think and act in the world.

Although finally, we learn, or we bring our attention to Malala.

And she is a leading activist for female rights and making sure that all females get access to education across the world.

So she stood up for herself in her home country, where females were presumed not to have a right to education, but now thanks to her, people in her country are now starting to get that education which they rightly deserve.

So when we look at all of these four people then, and there are many others.

They're not just an exclusive list here.

When we look at these people, we can class them as being change-makers.

And we can describe change-makers as being activists that make a difference either at a local, national, or international level.

And as we said there, you can make a difference even at a local level.

Not every part of change has to be recognised across the globe.

And how we do that with you is by looking at active citizenship.

And we can define active citizenship as a process to involve pupils in learning how to take part in democracy and use their citizenship knowledge, skills, and understanding to work together in trying to make a positive difference in the world and around them.

An active citizen is someone who cares about their community enough to change it.

Now, here we all should have an issue or we should be able to identify something in our community that we would like to see change.

And everybody, regardless of your age, should be able to bring about a change.

If you feel passionate enough, if you feel strongly about it enough, there are ways that you can bring about that change.

So moving on from that then, I've got another task for you here.

And what we'd like to see you to do here is to think about what are you passionate about? And I'd like you just to write a small paragraph here to identify an issue that you think needs changing in your local area.

And once you've got that idea, I want you to explain why it needs to change.

And if you can, linking back to our previous lessons, I want you to try and look up the issue of local democracy.

So who can you contact in your local area and how can they help you bring about a change? For instance, an example here, do you think there are enough facilities to make sure people recycle? Is there an issue with recycling in your local area? So I want you to think about in your local area, how you would like, or what you would like to change and why.

And a little bit of a challenge for you there.

I've got some eight key words there for you, and see if you can include those into your paragraph.

So you've got the words "community," "local council," "change," "action," "campaign," "affect," "impact," and "activities." So if you can't use those challenge words, try and get some of them, okay? And we'll see how many you can get.

But for this task, you can pause the video now and complete the task.

What are you passionate about or what needs to change in your local area? Once you've done so, hit resume back on the video and we will continue with a little bit of feedback.

Okay.

So here's a little model paragraph I've put together for you.

In that, "The issue I feel should change "is recycling bins in town.

"There is a plastic problem "and the local council have to deal with recycling.

"If there were bins in town "that could be used for plastic bottles, "this would reduce the waste "and have a big impact on recycling and the environment.

"One action I could take is to collect plastic bottles "from the local community to highlight my campaign, "and I could take them to my local counsellor "to show how much waste there is.

"Hopefully seeing all of the bottles "will affect the counsellor "and make him want to support my idea." So again, it can be anything that is local to you.

Anything that is important to you.

Okay? But we're looking at what can you do in your local areas here to bring about that change? Because sometimes that will make the biggest difference.

Okay? Now what I want to move on to is thinking about those issues that you've got in your mind, and with those issues, what I'd like you to do is create a diamond nine.

Now we want to look about the things that you are most passionate about, down to the ones that you are least passionate about.

And whilst they are still important, we want to look at what you can do, because if you are passionate about something and are passionate about an issue, then you can drive forward that change.

So what I'd like you to do is just make a list of all of the issues that could be brought about in your area, all the things that you could change.

And first of all, put those into the diamond.

So make a list of all of the things that you could change.

If you feel comfortable doing that in this task already, you can hit pause on the video now and complete that task.

But if you need a little bit of prompting, stay with me and I will take you through some ideas.

So if we're looking at democratic change, okay? Democratic action, sorry, to bring about change.

You could do some of the following things.

You could be a part of your student council, okay? With the issue that you've got in mind, you could take it to your student council and try and bring about it at a local level in your school.

You could also join a local youth council.

So stepping up from your student council and you could start to go into your local area.

Stepping up from that then, if you are part of the local youth council, you could perhaps maybe invite your local counsellor or your local Member of Parliament to discuss the issues that you want to bring to their attention.

You might want to speak up as a concerned resident at a local meeting.

So you might have some residency meetings that take place in your local area, perhaps at your school, or perhaps at a local community centre.

And you may want to write or turn up and speak about the issues there to bring it to the attention of the residents.

Whilst you're in school, whilst you are on the student council.

If you're not on the student council, perhaps you would like to make a plea with the school governors and they can help you try and bring awareness to that issue and obviously discuss it with the other governors in school and how about they can help you bring that change.

You could find a national campaign that kind of fits your issue.

And because it has national recognition, you may feel that you may get more attention and more help and support in your campaign.

Before you could go into starting or supporting a petition.

So you could find an existing petition online which you can produce, or you can sign one that is already in existence and help that cause that way.

Before finally, you might want to send any evidence that you've collected, so any data that you might have got together from petitions, or maybe some surveys or some questionnaires that you've sent out, and send that to a national select committee at UK Parliament so they can have a look at the issues and put that forward into the chambers for discussion.

Okay.

Now that you've got bank of ideas and what you can do with them, what I'd like you to do is in that diamond nine, rank them from one to nine, with one being the most important and nine being the least important.

Okay, so have a look at all of those issues you've got, and at number one would be the most important issue all the way down to number nine being your least important issue.

But what I'd like you to do is to justify, and this is one of the key skills you will learn throughout citizenship teaching in that you need to be able to justify why you have put your certain areas of action into that category.

So in what position you've put them in.

So why have you put number one at the top? Why is that important for you? So you can say, "I have placed this action at number one "or number six or number seven, because.

." Now to make change happen, we have to plan and explore different options.

And this is what we've done today.

So the previous slide has looked at how you can bring about democratic action and who or what you can do to support that action.

Now we're thinking about what action you will go forward with.

So for this task here, press pause in the video here and annotate off your diamond nine why you have the top one at number one, all the way down to why have you put the bottom one at number nine.

Following on to finish today's lesson, I want to look at why is it important to stand up for what we believe in? So today we've explored how people can make a change in society.

And you've considered issues that you are passionate about in your local area.

Now, what I want to do is think about why it's important and why we're talking about this issue.

So to finish this lesson, what I'd like you to do is write another paragraph, this time explaining why is it important for citizens to stand up in what they believe in and why is important to use democratic action? So you can go back to the start of today's lesson, where we looked at change-makers or any change-makers that you may have came across in your other studies, and we need to look at why they have done what they have done.

So why is it important for people like you, people like me and people who have brought about change, why is it important for citizens to stand up for what they believe in? Okay? So to summarise your task is, "It is important for citizens to stand up "for what they believe in "and play a part in active democracy." So we'd like you to write maybe one or two paragraphs to explain this statement, including the following piece of information.

So highlighting some change-makers that you've learned about in today's lesson or of knowledge in your previous studies, and ideas you have had to show how you can make change happen in and around your local area.

So for the final time today, pause the video on now to complete your task, and once you've completed it, make sure you hit resume onto the video.

So here is a feedback model answer for you that we've put together.

We've said, "It is important to stand up "for what we believe in "as we have the ability to create change for the better.

"There are inspiring change makers throughout history "who have been able to campaign for change.

"For example, people like Rosa Parks in the 1950s "who campaigned for civil rights in the USA.

"This action was important to create a more equal society.

"June Eric Udorie used her knowledge "of politics to write to the government "and campaign to prevent feminism from being removed "from the politics curriculum.

"Her campaign worked and students will still learn "about this in their A-level studies.

"There are many different actions you can take 'to stand up for what you believe in, "including organising a petition "and meeting with people that have power, "like head teachers, your local counsellors, "and your local Member of Parliament.

"The most important thing is that "you stand up for your beliefs "as part of playing an active role in democracy." Now, what I would like to say is a very well done for today's lesson.

I'm really impressed and really proud of all the work that you've done there because that is really high level thinking.

And what I'd like to do is ask you to share your work with Oak National by asking your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging "@OakNational" and using the hashtag "#LearnwithOak." One last thing that I do have to ask you and to remind you is to consolidate the work that you've done on today's lesson, can you please complete the exit quiz now? Until next time, thank you for listening.

And I hope to see you all again very soon.