Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes

Part A. What are Human Rights?

25 minutes

Part B. Categories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

20 minutes

Part C. What can threaten Human Rights?

25 minutes

Reflection

Part A. What are Human Rights?

Step 1

Introduce the lesson by explaining that the intention is that students have a better understanding of what rights and freedoms are, with a specific focus on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Step 2

Invite students to complete the ‘Think-Pair-Share’ visible thinking routine (available on the Student Worksheet) around the following prompt:

What are Human Rights?

THINK
Students think about what they know or have learned about the topic for 1-3 minutes, and note down their thoughts.

PAIR
Invite students to form pairs and spend 2-5 minutes sharing their thoughts with their partners. They should discuss ideas, and ask questions of their partner about their thoughts on the topic. Students could then note down what they discussed on the Student Worksheet.

SHARE
Invites students to share what they have discussed in a whole class discussion. Write the question ‘What are human rights?’ on the whiteboard. Allow each pair to choose who will present their thoughts, ideas, and questions they had to the rest of the class. While pairs are sharing, note down any key points on the whiteboard. Invite students to note down any new or challenging ideas in the ‘Share’ column on the Student Worksheet.

Step 3

Ask students to turn their attention to the screen, and watch the following video overview of human rights:

What are Human Rights? - Australian Human Rights Commission (https://youtu.be/WJsUfck01Js)

Step 4

Return to the key points written on the whiteboard, and invite students to add any ideas or revisions that they may have after watching the video.

Step 5

Summarise this part of the lesson by inviting students to write down their own definition of human rights on the Student Worksheet. Then, invite volunteers to share their ideas with the class.

Part B: Categories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Step 1

Distribute a copy of the UDHR articles and Categories of Human Rights Match-Up to each student.

Explain to students that human rights are sometimes grouped, or categorised, into different kinds of rights. Historically, there have been two sets of common categories:

individual vs. collective rights
civil and political vs. social, economic and cultural rights

Step 2

Read through each of the categories and their definition with students and encourage them to ask any clarifying questions. Check that students are aware that some human rights could fall into more than one category. Once they are confident, invite students to work together in pairs to cut up the UDHR articles and categorise articles 3-27 according to the category they belong to.

Step 3

Once students have made their first attempt, invite each pair to join with another and to share the reasons behind the choices that they made.

Once students are confident that they have assigned each article of the UDHR, they can stick them down using glue.

Step 4

Invite students to consolidate their new understanding of the UDHR by working with their partner to write an elevator pitch: 75 words (30 seconds) that sum up the UDHR. Students can note down their pitch on the space provided on the Student Worksheet. Afterwards ask students to join with another pair and deliver their pitch.

Step 5

Ask for volunteers to share their pitch with the class.

Part C. What can threaten Human Rights?

Step 1

Invite students to refer to the UDHR articles and highlight or underline any rights they believe people in Australia definitely enjoy, and to place an asterisk next to any rights that they think could be improved for Australians and other people in Australia (such as tourists, immigrants, people seeking asylum etc.).

Step 2

Invite students to share any articles from the UDHR they believe are not being properly honoured in Australia, and encourage them to explain the thinking behind their choices with questions such as ‘What makes you say that?’ and ‘Can you explain your thinking to us?’

Step 3

Summarise this part of the lesson by facilitating a class discussion around the following questions:

What puts our rights at risk?
What can we each do to secure rights for all?
What happens to all rights if we ignore the violation of just one?

Foreshadow upcoming lessons with the class by informing them that The Story of our Rights and Freedoms lessons will challenge students to critically consider behaviours and what makes them acceptable or unacceptable. Students will explore the links between human rights and how the courts ensure that all people enjoy the rights and freedoms to which they are entitled. Future lessons will also explore the conciliation process and how it works to address and rectify human rights violations.

Reflection

Ask students to write either a question or an answer on a piece of note paper and to fold it in half. Questions should be something their classmates can answer, and both the questions and answers should relate to something that has featured in the lesson.

Collect the questions and answers in an envelope and then pass it around for all students to select one at random.

Give students a minute to devise a question or answer before inviting students to take turns reading out their piece of paper and the corresponding question or answer they have written. If students cannot think of a question or answer, open it up to the rest of the class and after a couple of suggestions have been made, ask the student to select the one they would most likely have written.

Take it further

Encourage students to complete these interactive lessons to further explore human rights and responsibilities. The two lessons facilitate the exploration of the meaning of ‘rights’ and develop an understanding of human rights as well as the responsibilities that are associated with them. They can be found here: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/introhumanrights/

Differentiated learning

Extension

Remove the information in the ‘Definition’ column of the Categories of Human Rights Match-Up and encourage students to create their own definition.

Provisional learning support

Encourage students who feel challenged by the concepts explored in the lesson (such as the articles in the UDHR) to work with more confident students to explore the concepts.

Story of Our Rights and Freedoms - Exploring Human Rights

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