Pupil Voice Year 5 and 6: Two of everything by Babette Cole

I always begin the academic year with Pupil Voice lessons. The aim is to lay the groundwork for the year of equalities education by promoting and ethos where children in the school are speaking up, joining in and making their voice heard.

Text: Two of everything- Babette Cole Lesson plan by Andrew Moffat / www.equalitiesprimary.com

Resources: prepare a range of examples of public meeting posters taken form google images.

LI: To share problems

Success criteria: I know what to do if I have a problem / I know who I can talk to

Starter: What are the different roles that are needed to make a group work effectively? What is a marriage?  Who can get married? If people who are married keep arguing what are their options? Once you are married do you have to stay together for ever?

Main : Read text and discuss the themes in the book. What did Mum and dad argue about? Why do you think Paula and Demetrius thought it was their fault? What did they do about their problem? Role play: Show the title, “The trouble with adults”. In each group one person is the chair person whose role it is to run the debate and tell people when they can speak. One person speaks in favour of adults and one person speaks against adults. The fourth person acts as a judge and may ask questions to each speaker once they have delivered their points. The chairperson must encourage the group to reach a conclusion by the end of the role play. Each group should then feed back their main points to the class, summarising positive and negative things about adults.

Activity: Prepare a poster for the meeting on parents. Look at the poster made by Demetrius and Paula in the book; how can it be improved? Does the poster give any information about what the problem is? Do you think more children would have come to the meeting if they knew more information about it? Look at examples of posters on the internet; which are most effective? Why?

Plenary: Do you think Paula and Demetri were right to hold a meeting to talk about their worries? What else could they have done? Who else could they have talked to? Did they ever try talking to their parents? If they hadn’t spoken up would anything have changed? How do you think they felt when the realised they weren’t the only ones feeling sad and confused about life at home?

AFL questions: What have we learned about today? / If I am worried about something I can…