My Voice-Our Rights/Ma voix-nos droits

We are studying Global Issues in grade 6 and have learned about understanding need in our world, developing countries, child labour, rising to the call of need, poverty, and respecting others. We are very interested in writing a song which highlights the rights of the child. We are planning on having original music, lyrics and many voices singing and speaking together.

Update (March 26, 2014)

We are working hard to get our song ready for the deadline next week! Unite! We have human rights! On y est presque!

Update (April 2, 2014)

Well, we did it! After several weeks of learning about the rights of the child, figuring out how to re-word them in rhyming format with the input of 19 students and finally how to put those lyrics to a rhythm, we wrote a song! From a teacher perspective, this has been a very rewarding experience :)

When the students from an urban area in Newfoundland start learning about students their age in other parts of the world, it's a real eye opener. There were many discussions along the lines of, “But how can that be...?” and “But they shouldn’t be allowed to...!” Seeing how the children were able to identify the key words when reading about the rights of the child, and then seeing how to set that to a beat was inspiring for them was heartwarming.

Imagineaction, and more specifically, My voice-Our rights, fit right in to our Social Studies and Language Arts curriculum. It is a wonderful program using Connect, Engage, Thrive, Lead, Live and Care as its six themes really got my students motivated to see what they could learn about in terms of themselves as global citizens. Avoir l’occasion d’écrire une chanson en anglais et en français était motivant aussi pour une classe d’immersion française.