All About Animals: Secondary Teachers: Lesson Plan 5: Raising Awareness

 

How does this fit into the National Curriculum? Pupils should negotiate, decide on and participate responsibly in both school and community-based activities (3b)

Teachers’ Note: Your job is to chair and steer the discussion and activities and advise the pupils about their choices, but the choices and motivation should come from them. The class can nominate some members to present a report on what they achieved afterwards in a school assembly.

Animals around the world get a rough deal. There are many campaigns running to help animals in many ways and you, as a class, can adopt a campaign and offer support and help for at least one month. Your teachers will advise and guide you but the choices you make are up to you. Below is a list of steps that might help. Of course you are free to think up your own ideas and put them into action!

  1. Choose an animal campaign that you want to support. Why not make a list of ideas and vote on which the class would like to support?
  2. Brainstorm as many ideas as you can about how you could help that campaign and then agree which are good ideas and should be followed and which might be too difficult or impractical to undertake.
  3. Assign roles to people. Make sure that everyone has something to do. You might want to form groups to take on specific areas such as fund-raising, getting petitions drawn up and signed, writing an article for the school magazine or local newspaper, or researching more about this project.
  4. After supporting this campaign for one month, one person from each group should present a report to a school assembly about what you achieved and why you felt that this campaign should be supported.

Campaigns you might like to consider are:

  1. Saving Harp Seals, International Fund for Animal Welfare (www.ifaw.org)
  2. Dogs for Food Campaign, World Society for the Protection of Animals (www.wspa.org.uk)
  3. The Wolf Campaign, Born Free Foundation (www.bornfree.org.uk)
  4. End Factory Farming, Viva! (www.viva.org.uk)
  5. Ban the Bird Market, Animal Aid (www.animalaid.org.uk)