Refugee Week Activities for KS2

print page prev page

Aims and Objectives:

To explore the range of children's own feelings and emotions (positive and negative).

To introduce children to the concept of being a refugee.

To understand that children, regardless of circumstances and where they live, have the same needs and feelings.

To empathise with the feelings and needs of child refugees.

Outcomes:

A simple front page of a newspaper - with headlines, subtitles, pictures, captions and stories.

Activities:

Activity 1: Feelings and emotions

Resources:

Collection of photographs of people: eg   from magazines, newspapers

Worksheet 1: KS2 'Feelings' word bank.

1) Whole class: Introduce children to pictures of people and elicit ideas on what they might be feeling, and why?

Worksheet 1 can be used to extend pupil's vocabulary, with aid of class discussion and use of dictionaries.

2) Distribute photos of people. Each child takes one photo, imagines they are one of the people in the picture, and writes a sentence about   'themselves':   What are they doing? What are they feeling?

Activity 2: Being a refugee

Introduce concept of 'refugee': Some children have to leave their homes because they are in danger. Discuss reasons why people may need to leave their homes.

Discuss what pupils would take with them if they were suddenly in danger and had to leave home in 10 minutes time. See worksheet 1. Distribute one copy of worksheet 2 to each pupil.

Worksheet 2:   What would I take and what would I leave behind? Activity.

Worksheet 3:   What would I take and what would I leave behind? Pupil worksheet.

Activity 3: Looking at images

Resources:

Children bring in one photograph from home that is special to them.

Refugee photographs:

Girl with doll made of plastic bags

Boy makes herd of cattle from banana flowers

Girls skip through elastic ropes

Boy does cartwheel in empty classroom

A) Children talk about their own photographs, to whole class, or in groups, and say why it is important to them, what it makes them feel, remember.

B) Look at the four photographs of children on the computer with the class. Discuss the pictures. Who are they? What are they doing? How do they feel? Discuss similarities and differences with themselves.

Activity 4: Refugee children's stories

Resources:

Worksheet 4:  Refugee children's stories.

Worksheet 5: Refugee children's stories - comparison table.

Pupils can use an atlas, globe, or world map to find the countries from which the children in the stories come.

Class read the refugee children's stories. Discuss the stories with the class.

Class complete the comparison table in groups.

They can discuss the reasons why the children fled from their homes.

Discuss the feelings of the children in the stories with the class, at the different points in the story.

Activity 5: Newspaper Front Page