So I planned to do something to teach the twins about terrorism, I knew that with all the talk of terrorism in the media and amongst friends and their peers they would be asking questions, so now is a good a time as any to be prepared.
The twins to my surprise did know what was happening in France but knew nothing of terrorism and had no real understanding of what it is.
I have created the lapbook in a way that tries to explain the process of terrorism and the process it goes through.
I created this lapbook as we do a lot of leaning through lapbook and notebook learning to help me as much as them, so that I could assess what we know and fill in any gaps. So this is how we did, this has taken a few days with bits being done here and there to lead them gently into the topic.
Front Page - stick to the front of the lapbook
Centre of the lapbook - cut out the wheel and place a butterfly pin in the middle
We discussed each window to get an understanding of how citizens participate in politics in a peaceful way -
Voting - We talked about when we went to vote (my children are aware of politics and we discuss candidates and their ideas and policies and how government make decisions and how people participate in politics even if they think they are not participating and the fact that even when people do not vote they are participating by not voting this is a form of protest.
Protests - I asked them how they think a protest could be carried out.
We talked about how various professions go on strike by not going to work which disrupts services such as the fire service, teachers, council workers, post men, prisoners with hunger strikes and we discussed the way in which these protests affect people.
We briefly talked about other forms of protests such as gatherings of people with placards, songs with lyrics expressing in words what is being protested, we saw the naked bike ride earlier on in the year, so we looked up and discovered how this has been used for different expressions of protests over the years (find out about it here)
Exercise:- I asked them to think about a situation at home where we disagree on something, we chose tea time and how we choose meals and decide what we want to eat and how we decide what to watch on TV and how we sort out that disagreement, we vote, as sometimes two of us want something and the third one has to accommodate what the majority want.
We then did the word search looking for the words associated with political participation.
Then I went on to talk about Terrorists as another form of political participation - I asked them to think about some ways that some people behave when they do not get their own way.
We discussed how some people use violence and may hit or push or call names to get their own way, I then asked them why they think some people behave that way and explained that was their way of communicating something that they wanted to let the other person know,. and that Terrorism is similar to this but unlike falling out with a friend or family, Terrorists use force, violence, or threats to attain political goals through fear, intimidation, or coercion of lots of people at the same time.
The twins asked what coercion means so they looked it up in the dictionary to find out at this point. (as we are doing dictionary work regularly currently) so it was nice to tie into this lapbook.
I asked them if they knew of any reasons why people would become terrorists and we discussed the reasons on the fan booklet.
We then talked about the history of terrorism and different events throughout history, I was careful to use different circumstances for the terrorism, I used The French Revolution for an example of Government Terrorism, Wall Street Bombing for unknown perpetrators and 9/11 for radical groups...We looked on google for brief information on each event...
We then looked at the behaviour clipboards to look at some of the things that terrorists do.
We discussed that the aim of the terrorist is to make people feel scared even if there is no real threat, and how they use and exploit media to help them do that by making sure information of the attack reaches people and how they do not care for the law and will carry out acts such as murder and kidnap and destroy property.
Oliver then asked me if that is why the refugees needed help - The twins
both know that I was a volunteer for Refugee Action for a short time
and they understand from our family charity donations that people have to
leave home to go to somewhere safe away from terrorists activity and that people need support in these terrorist situations.
So we talked about where the countries are that they have heard about recently and we looked on the map where these countries are in relation to us in UK and did some longitude and latitude work and went over some continents.
We then talked about the distance to each other the countries where and how people would get from those countries by boat, train, plane or walking and how hard those journeys could be with lack of food and supplies and weather conditions and access to money and healthcare and the difficulties that people faced when they reached borders, they questioned what are borders at this point so I expanded.
For them to understand what borders are we watched this quick video What are the different types of borders and we then went back to the maps and looked at some of the borders, to expand further I found a video and interactive map that shows the change in borders throughout history and what particular events took place to have an effect on those border, (it is a fascinating map and extremely interactive). find that here >> Geacron World History, the youtube video that speeds the process up is worth a watch too. (below)
We then discussed difference in cultures and made our own passports. which you can find on activity village website we also talked about some people not having passports and the reasons why this could be. which could include due to having possessions destroyed, not having the protection of their country, having to leave quickly.
I asked them if they knew of any other reason why people would move from their own country and leave their homes, friends and family behind in the circumstance we had talked about.
We looked at the possible reasons on the fan booklet and discussed each one.
What is an Asylum Seeker -people who have not yet got refugee status.
What is a refugee - We went to a number of website to look at different Refugee stories carefully picking different circumstances and videos and also talked about the charities that help them.
Here is a list of some of the websites that can be used -
We looked at some stories of some refugees and picked out a poem of how one refugee felt from the IRespect Website (click here or on the poem to access) and we learnt what a Acrostic poem was.
We then talked about how our Government helps to keep us safe.
We talked about:-
- Police Officers and what they do and looked at the Northumberland Police Description of what a Police Officers job is. >>> access here
- Security Services - we talked about MI5 and MI6 (the kids happily spent quite some time playing James bond with some newly acquired walkie talkies after this discussion and attempted to create and crack our own secret code messages code)
- (MI5) is a British intelligence agency working to protect the UK's national security against threats such as terrorism and espionage.
- (MI6) is the British intelligence agency which supplies the British Government with foreign intelligence
We made or own sentences in code and had to crack the codes of each others sentence.
Then had a recapped what we had learnt about terrorism and completed a fill in the missing word sheet.
We ended off with a vocabulary word list thinking of words associated with our lapbook such as:-
Boat, plane, sad, threat, etc.
The finished lapbook looks like this, with a pocket to add additional pages in the future and to also store the maps and vocabulary word list.
The lapbook pages can be downloaded here
To finish this post off I thought I would share a list of children's books about human rights, all of which can be purchased by clicking the title where it will take you to ebay and you will be able to select the cheapest copy.
All Sorts to Make a World by John Agard
The Child’s Elephant by Rachel Campbell–Johnston
I Have the Right to Be a Child by Alan Serres (Translated by Sarah Ardizzione)
Kami and the Yaks by Andrea Stenn Stryer
The Humans by Matt Haig
The Dragon Fly Pool by Eva Ibbotson
Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
Phoenix by SF Said
Varjak Paw by SF Said
Sawbones by Catherine Johnson
Torn by David Massey
Where I Belong by Gillian Cross
Wolf by Gillian Cross
After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross
Shine by Candy Gourlay
Tall Story by Candy Gourlay
Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo
Street Child by Berlie Doherty
Far From Home by Berlie Doherty
Looking At The Stars by Jo Cotterill
Abela – The Girl Who Saw Lions by Berlie Doherty
Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzman
Girl Underground by Morris Gleitzman
Old Dog, New Tricks by Bali Rai
The Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda
Deadly Letter by Mary Hoffman
The Island by Armin Greder
Under The Skin by Cathy MacPhail
Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads by David Almond
Nadine Dreams of Home by Bernard Ashley
Three Wishes Palestinan and Israeli Children Speak by Deborah Ellis
One of Us by Jeannie Waudby
A Stone in My Hand by Cathryn Clynton
Undone by Cat Clarke
Blackberry Blue and other Fairy Stories by Jamila Gavin
The Wheel of Surya by Jamila Gavin
If You Were Me by Samira Osman
The Heaven Shop Deborah Ellis
Children of War Deborah Ellis
The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo
Artichoke Hearts by Sita Brahmachari
Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari
Red Leaves by Sita Brahmachari
Breadwinner Deborah Ellis
Now Is the Time for Running by Michael Williams
In The Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda
The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean
She Wore Red Trainers by Naima B Roberts
Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat
My Basmati Mat Mitzvah by Paula J Freedman
Kindertransport by Diane Samuels
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