Here you will find a huge range of ideas, resources and support for teaching across different ages by human rights theme.
Our resources are written by specialist advisors, they encourage engaged classroom discussions about human rights using creative approaches to understanding truth, freedom and justice.
Here you will find a huge range of ideas, resources and support for teaching across different ages by human rights theme.
Our resources are written by specialist advisors, they encourage engaged classroom discussions about human rights using creative approaches to understanding truth, freedom and justice.
A series of activities for one-two lessons to explore conflicting views on the land rights of Traveller groups, with a main activity to explore and try to resolve the issues through role-play and discussion.
Session 9 - respect
In this session students look at the subtleties and connotations of language, and the impact words have in describing a person or event and how that influences us. They read The Right Word by Imtiaz Dharker, which explores how we see and label other people, before creating their own poem about respect.
About Words that Burn
Words That Burn challenges you to take action for human rights through poetry.
Using this resource secondary schools can explore human rights through poetry, with 10 free educational resources designed to help students develop their own writing and performance style.
This is national project to explore and express human rights through poetry by Amnesty International in partnership with Cheltenham festivals.
Session 9 - words that burn
Case studies and films show that we all have the power to stand up for human rights through poetry. As an example, three well-known poets take on Amnesty International’s Make a Difference in a Minute challenge – to perform a human rights poem in one minute. Challenge your students to do this too.
Every term session plan 10 can be used to introduce your students to a particular human rights theme and individual at risk of human rights violation. Students can write their own poems and discover the impact their voice and their poetry can have.
About Words that Burn
Words That Burn challenges you to take action for human rights through poetry.
Using this resource secondary schools can explore human rights through poetry, with 10 free educational resources designed to help students develop their own writing and performance style.
This is national project to explore and express human rights through poetry by Amnesty International in partnership with Cheltenham festivals.
We have the right to friends and family.
Bring together pictures of your important people to celebrate your friends and family.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need
Colouring pencils and/or pens, paper, craft materials
What to do
Who are your important people? Draw, find, or take a picture of people who are special to you – pets and toys included!
Make a collage or make a belonging tree. Don’t forget to include yourself!
Share a picture or hold it up when you are connecting with friends and family.
Two lesson plans which introduce students to concepts of fairness and unfairness, the human right of freedom of expression and Amnesty’s work in this area. Developed in consultation with teachers working in Special Schools.
Session 5 - witness
In this session poet Emtithal Mahmoud asks students to ‘bear witness’ to her experiences of genocide in Darfur. Students look at poetic responses to war and human rights abuses to understand that poetry can destroy silence and create remembrance. They then choose a photograph and let events speak through their writing.
About Words that Burn
Words That Burn challenges you to take action for human rights through poetry.
Using this resource secondary schools can explore human rights through poetry, with 10 free educational resources designed to help students develop their own writing and performance style.
This is national project to explore and express human rights through poetry by Amnesty International in partnership with Cheltenham festivals.
We are all born free and human rights belong to all of us.
Be a human rights detective to find out more about our rights.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need
Right Up Your Street and a copy of the UDHR
What to do
Be a human rights detective! Using a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can you spot: People asking for their rights? Enjoying and using their rights? Having their rights denied?
Can you draw a picture of where you live to show people enjoying some of the rights in the UDHR?
Explore the impact of poverty, and the changes needed to ensure everyone’s right to live with dignity. Three lessons, an assembly and films about residents of a Kenyan community and their fight for human rights to download below.
Search on Vimeo for the Lesson 1 Film - Deep Sea
Search on Vimeo for the Lesson 3 Film - Nyamalo Interview
We all have a duty to each other.
Write messages to show solidarity with the people in your home.
You’ll need
Paper, pens
What to do
Write poems or notes to leave around your house for the people you live with. Think about what would make people feel happy or moved and let that shape what you write. Where can you put your notes so that they will be a lovely surprise?
Share your messages with us.
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
We all have the right to have our own thoughts and ideas and to share them
Make faces to show different feelings.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need:
A mirror, feelings resource sheet
What to do
Look in the mirror or look at someone else and make sad/happy faces. Can you make a face to express fear and anger too? Look at the faces on the sheets or the screen – what are they feeling? What other words can we use for these feelings?
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
Download this comprehensive pack of seven curriculum-linked lesson plans full of exciting and innovative ways to teach human rights to children aged 11-16.
The pack contains all the resources you need to make a Human Rights Day, or just one lesson, engaging and memorable.
Lessons
Understanding Human Rights
Human Rights in the UK
Mia Dia, Y Los Derechos (Spanish)
Freedom of Expression
Refugees and Asylum
Is it a crime to be gay in Boldovia?
Taking Action
Films from the resource
The resource also includes links to clips that help to make human rights relevant to your students lives.
We all have the right to privacy.
Celebrate our right to privacy by sending secret messages.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need
Paper, lemon or onion juice, cotton bud or small paint brush, a light bulb
What to do
Write a secret message using the juice. Whoever receives it can reveal the message by holding it close to the hot light bulb.
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
We are all born free.
Make a kite to celebrate our right to freedom.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need
Paper, paint or colouring pencils, scissors, string or ribbon
What to do
Draw a kite shape and decorate it with a scene in which you feel free. Cut it out and add string or ribbon.
If you let your kite go, where would it travel? Who might find it? Can you write or draw a story showing what might happen?
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
Amnesty and CILIP, the library and information association, are working to develop children’s understanding of human rights through the outstanding books shortlisted for the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals. All the books are also eligible for the Amnesty CILIP Honour, for illuminating, upholding or celebrating human rights. The Medals and Honour winners will be announced on 19th June.
We have created special Story Explorer resources to help adults, young people and children explore the human rights values at the heart of all the shortlisted books.
Flora Popescu’s parents are planning to
defect when daily life suddenly brings
frightening changes – some linked to a
friendship between Flora and a new boy
at school. Unlike his poor classmates,
Daniel dresses and eats well, and his
father ranks high in the secret police.
Flora slowly realises that her father is in
danger and only she can save him from
the secret police.
This is a compelling story about the
Crimean Tatars’ struggle to reclaim the
land from which they were exiled in
World War II. All her life, Safi’s parents
dreamed of returning to her grandpa’s
native village in Crimea. But they end
up exchanging their sunny Uzbekistan
house for a squalid camp where no one
welcomes them. The story explores
how the struggle threatens to tear Safi’s
family apart, and asks if this strange
land can ever become home.
This resource supports educators to introduce students, aged 7 -13, to young people’s rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The session plan below will help students think about what rights are important to them and understand that everyone is equally entitled to Human Rights. It will also give them the opportunity to explore the Convention on the Rights of the Child and to understand that young people have special rights that are unique to them.
Human rights belong to all of us.
Write human rights laws for a new planet.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need:
A copy of the Human Rights Act, paper, pens and pencils
What to do:
A new planet has been discovered. No humans have ever been to or lived on this planet. There are no laws, no rules and no history.
You are the first settler. Complete the following activities to design your planet:
Name your planet
Write a list of 10 human rights for the planet that should be protected by law and explain why you have chosen those rights?
Look at the Human Rights Act on page 11 of the resource. How does your list compare to the rights listed in the Act? Would you like to add any new rights to your list now?
Draw your planet and include your chosen final list of Human Rights around the outside of it.
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
We all have the right to have our own thoughts and ideas and to share them
Make bean bags to show different feelings.
Each week we will share more bite size ideas for fun and creative ways to learn about human rights.
You’ll need:
Balloons, uncooked rice, funnel, feelings resource sheet
What to do:
Insert funnel into the top of the balloon, pour in rice. When the balloons are full, draw faces on them using a permanent marker pen to represent the emotions of happy, sad, angry, surprised.
Sitting or standing, pass or roll the balloons to each other. When you receive it, you should name the feeling on the balloon and make the face.
What’s another word to express that feeling? How do you feel when you see someone making a feeling face? What would you do if someone is feeling sad?
Amnesty’s education work is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.