Culminating

Activity- Part 1
Preston Searle

Activity Name: What do you need? What do you want?

Target Age Range: Grades 4-6

Intended Learning Outcomes:

-The required objective of this activity is to teach children the basic rights and needs

of humans and what happens when these basic needs are not met.

-Highlight how peoples needs and wants vary within our own communities and the

global community, as well as understanding the underlying inequity behind this.

Resources Required: Post It notes, Glue, Scissors, Newspaper, Magazines, and

Markers

Process:

To begin the activity pairs of children will be asked to each grab a stack of 10

Post It notes. The children will be given instructions to decorate them with things

that they believe children need, and things that children want. The children will be

allowed to use magazines, newspapers, and markers to decorate their Post It notes

to express their wants or needs. The children will be given a full hour to accomplish

this task so that they can clearly identify their wants and needs as well as express

their ideas in an artistic manner.

After an hour has passed each pair will be asked to separate their cards into

two piles. The first pile will be actual NEEDS (items necessary for survival, this

could be things such as food, water, shelter, etc) and the other pile will be

WANTS(things not necessary for survival, but things that children desire i.e. toys,

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video games, school, a phone, etc). Then teachers will pick pairs at random, and

ask which pile for the pair is bigger the need or the wants. It is very likely that most

pairs will have larger want piles then needs. The teacher will then ask the students

why they think they have more wants than needs and if they believe less fortunate

children would have the same outcome.

After this the teacher will now ask the students to imagine they are a less

fortunate person who doesnt have the same privileges or opportunities as them and

thus do not have any of the wants they wrote down. To simulate this the teacher will

begin walking around the classroom with a garbage bin and will ask students to

dispose of all their wants. Students will now be asked how they feel that they lost all

of their wants, and if their life would be any harder without these wants.

Next the teacher will now explain to students that although some less

privileged people dont have any of the wants previously listed, there are also some

people who dont have access to all the needs they listed. To simulate this the

teacher will again walk around with the garbage bin and ask students to dispose of

two of their needs. Students will now be asked how their lives would be changed

without these two needs, and if the remaining needs they have would be enough for

them to survive?

Lastly the activity will conclude with a discussion period. The discussion period

will give the teacher the opportunity to ask further questions such as:

- What happens to a person when his or her basic needs are not met?

- Are there people whose basic needs are not met in the world? In Canada? In

the community? In the school?

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 - What can we do to ensure peoples basic needs are met?

- How can we help those whose needs are not being met?

In conclusion, the overall expected goal from this activity is that the students

develop a better understanding of what the basic rights and needs of human beings

are. Although children posses ample wants its important for them to understand

that not all people in the world have the luxury of having wants. Many people are

just lucky to have their basic needs met and some arent even this lucky. Distilling

the key social justice concept of human needs into children at such a young age will

hopefully foster a greater appreciation for what they have and create a new

awareness for inequity in the world.

If this activity is being performed with ESL students then some minor changes

can be implemented to ensure this activity can be done. One option can be to pair all

of the ESL students together so that the ones with stronger English can help the less

experienced ones understand the activity and the questions being asked. Another

option is to provide a translated set of instructions to the ESL student so that they

may understand the purpose of the activity. The teacher will then ask them to

respond in English the best they can so that they feel included in the activity.

Reflection:

When deciding what issue of social justice to focus on, I received inspiration

from an activity one of my teachers did when I was in elementary school. The

activity was different from my own, but the core premise was the same, to teach

students the difference between needs and wants and the inability of many people

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in the world to receive essential needs. The activity began with a group

brainstorming session of either needs or wants we believed all children had. Similar

to mine the task involved no set requirement for the number of wants and number

of needs. At the end of the activity the teacher began splitting all the things we said

into needs or wants and not surprisingly there was disproportionately more wants

than needs. This then segued her discussion to talk about how many people in our

own communities and around the world dont have access to all their essential

needs let alone the wants we listed. Till this day I still remember this activity, as the

message was so strong. As kids we go along thinking very little of our outside world

and almost believe that everyone must be similar to us and have the same access to

opportunities and resources. This activity was an eye opener as it allowed me to

understand that there is inequality and poverty in this world and that I should be

grateful for what I have. When designing my activity I wanted to have the same

impact on students that my teacher had on me in elementary school, but in turn go a

step further. To achieve this I added components such as asking students to dispose

of their wants and need into a garbage can to trigger a feeling of loss and empathy.

In addition to this I added a variety of thought-proving question to enable students

to critically analyze what happens when needs are not met and what can be done to

help fix this issue. Overall I believe I created an activity that effectively addresses a

key issue of social justice while in manner that is both enjoyable and approachable

for children.