The Right Words competition will help to inspire and support students in successfully achieving curriculum standards in Citizenship (England and Wales) and Modern Studies (Scotland); it will also encourage their English and creative writing work while at the same time developing an understanding of an important global human rights issue: Child Soldiers.
We have produced a sample lesson plan for you to use in your classroom - the lesson plan and other resources are free and downloadable from this website. They include all the information you need to deliver lessons using this competition.
In addition you can find a series of photographs of child soldiers to look at with your students in our Photos section; and our Resources page contains additional resources including background information on the countries where child soldiers are currently being used, suggestions for further reading and useful links.
The lesson plan suggests one way you might like to use the competition in your classroom; but you can of course use the competition as a starting point to develop your own activities if you prefer to.
And while the lesson plan is designed for classroom use, students can also enter the competition individually; so if you would rather not give the assignment to a whole class but have particular students you feel might like to take part, just draw their attention to this website and they can enter for themselves.
The London Network is able to provide a limited number of free workshops to schools taking part in the competition. These are designed to engage students with human rights and writing and can be tailored to the needs of your student group. Please contact competition@hrw.org if you are interested.
