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Children's Rights: A Teaching Unit for ESL
This unit should take from 2-6 hours, depending on interest and extension activities. The unit
is designed for beginner-intermediate students ages 14 and up.
Objectives
Students will:
Read a personal account of a young girl denied the right to an education
Learn vocabulary associated with the reading
Discuss the importance of the rights of an individual in a society
Write a reflective essay on the theme equal rights
Materials
- List of Vocabulary Words
- Reading: To be Born a Girl
- Group Discussion Questions
- Declaration of Children's Rights and Group Discussion
- Grammar Exercise: 'to be'
Activity I: Pre-reading (10 minutes)
Write the words "human rights" on the board. Ask students to brainstorm words and ideas that come to
mind. What does the term human rights mean? Have them brainstorm
a list of human rights. What are some human rights? Call on students to
come up to the board and list them.
Activity II: Predicting (5-7 minutes)
Write the title of the reading passage on the board. Ask students what
it means "to be born a girl" in their country. What are some good things and some bad things
about being a girl in their countries? Make a list on the board.
Activity III: Vocabulary: Words from
the story (10 minutes)
Hand out the list of vocabulary words from the story. Have students look
over the list. Ask volunteers to give a definition of the words to the
rest of the class. Have students look at the title of the story again
and then over the vocabulary list. Can they guess what the story is going
to be about?
Activity IV: Reading "To Be Born a
Girl" (20 minutes)
Hand out the reading to students. Have students read the passage in class.
Activity V: Group Discussion (30 minutes)
Divide students into small groups to discuss the questions on the Group
Discussion printout. You may want to assign each student in each group a role to keep the discussion
going smoothly. Students draw index cards with a role written on them. They then take that role in
the groups. Some of the roles might be: question asker, encourager, note taker, reporter, timekeeper.
The reporter reports the group's ideas to the class.
Activity VI: Extended Group Activity (40 Minutes)
Part I (20 minutes) -- Hand out the
Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Have students
read over them in small groups and answer the questions.
Part II (20 minutes-1 hour) -- Have
students in their small group write additional rights to add to the
Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Pass out colored paper and markers. Have each group
write their declarations and decorate it. Hang the declarations on a bulletin board or in the
classroom.
Activity VII: Grammar
Exercise (15 minutes)
Have students study the present and past tense of the verb 'to be.' Hand
out the grammar worksheet and have students fill in the blanks with the
present or the past tense of the verb to be.
Activity VIII: Writing Assignment (40
minutes)
Have students think about the ways in which different groups of people
have different rights in a society. For example, everyone may have the
right to an education, but some people such as Maya's family may not be
able to afford it.
Ask students to respond in essay form to the follwing question: Think
about someone in your community who does not have equal rights. What barriers
prevent them from having equal rights? Propose a plan that your community
could get involved in to help ensure equal rights for this person or group.
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