1. How to do pint sized Citizenship but with all the bells and whistles
CitizBite!
How to do pint sized Citizenship but with all the bells and whistles
This workshop recognises the challenges many Citizenship teachers face in trying to teach high quality lesson activities in varied and challenging situations. The workshop explored those challenges and set out to suggest models that teachers might adopt. It is a work in practice. Notes are to help the reader are below each slide.
Chris Waller and Gavin Baldwin, July 2017

2. What’s the challenge?
How do you do high quality Citizenship in just 20 minutes?
How do you do high quality Citizenship where there is no curriculum time allotted?
How can you do justice to teaching controversial issues in either of the above?
Here are the challenges? Discussion should be about these and any others added to the list.

3. The BIG issues Covering controversial and topical issues
Fitting in key concepts
Thinking of resources
Structuring learning
Engaging pupils with great pedagogy
Active citizenship
Organising high quality learning
Remembering assessment, recording and reporting
Discussion should now focus on the big issues of the challenges-these are suggested above. In addition, you might hear suggested deciding what knowledge to teach, considering the whole learning experience, prior learning, sustainability and the legacy of the activity/learning. The workshop leader should gather all comments and then isolate those issues that most participants share in common.

4. Here is a winning approach
The P4C approach is a winner-promoting critical thinking skills and deliberation over an issue. You can see a great example of how to do this in the next three slides, or find more at
This workshop illustrated one approach and then suggested two alternatives (slides 6-9).
Slide 5 contains the approach used in the workshop-resources are in the Word doc and sample pdfs

5. ACTIVITY to ILLUSTRATE a P4C APPROACH WHERE TIMETABLE TIME IS SHORT
Split participants into small groups.
Refer to the activity sheet-which should be copied and each question put into a separate envelope.
Each group is given a source of news/media source-picture, blog page, news article etc. each group appoints a scribe who will have to make rapid notes on the coming discussions.
Participants are given the first envelope and have three minutes to discuss it using their source. At the end of the three minutes, they are given the next envelope for another three minutes.
This is repeated until all six envelopes have been issued and discussed at group level.
Two sample sources are with these materials.
The workshop leader asks for two sets of feedback:
What was the source, what was discussed as a summary?
To critique this model for high quality citizenship teaching where time is short.
Examples of the critique might be:
How to ensure campaigning is fitted in or referenced, the importance of relating to a local context, asking BIG questions that can be explored, choosing resources for the activity with care-recognising controversial, topical and sensitive issues, isolating the concepts related to the issues.
Key observations from workshop participants were:
Ensure preparation time is clearly understood and managed
Rotate the students to different groups
Ensure variety in sources used
Consider reducing the number of questions or a speed dating approach-also know as Opinion Finders (
Can active citizenship be in the resource-not just information?
Change Question 5 to What else do we need to know?
Legacy-what follows on from the activity?

6. 3. NO ONE TELLS YOU WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK!
1. NO ONE LEFT OUT
2. GOOD ATMOSPHERE
The following slides 6-9 are an alternative to use with similar sources to the above
3. NO ONE TELLS YOU WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK!
3. NO ONE (not even the teacher) HAS ALL THE ANSWERS!

7. STAYING FOCUSED
THINKING HARD
WORKING AS A TEAM

8. Looking at PERSPECTIVES: image, film, cartoon, song, story
Drawing or writing your FIRST THOUGHTS and sharing it
3. Making QUESTIONS in pairs
4. VOTING on a question
5. TALKING about it
6. SHARING what we have learned

9. Any alternatives?
What’s the story? Exploring sources of info from press, new media, TV etc
What are the issues? Relate these to key concepts like rights, democracy, justice, equalities etc
What are the arguments? Identify the controversy
What can YOU do about this? Active citizenship responses
What is important to you or us? Choosing to isolate issues from the class and pick them off week by week
A third approach we recommend

10. Checklist
Identity what you can do in the time or situation NOT what you cant do
Make it coherent, engaging and progressive
Consider a range of resources that are easy to use, open up the discussion and all can access
Think about impact-how will this make my pupils feel and think?
Plan accordingly where controversial or sensitive issues are involved
Look for follow up next time, in another subject or alternative provision eg assembly
Ensure you give the pupils an opportunity to reflect and record their thoughts and progress with the issue
Be prepared to come back to the matter-in another session or with other colleagues, especially if the issue is controversial, topical and sensitive.
Reflect on the list above before closing the workshop.