Global Citizenship magazine for schools

What does it mean to be doing well in life?

In this activity pupils will consider what it means to be doing well in life and compare their ideas with those of two young people in Ethiopia and Peru.

What does it mean to be doing well in life? Oxfam GB

Aims

  • To develop awareness and understanding of the measure of ‘well-being’
  • To reflect on perspectives of young people from other countries on ‘well-being’ indicators

What you need

What to do

  • Ask pupils: What do we need to be doing well in life?
  • Use the Think, Pair, Share method to generate some ideas on the board. Discuss with the class the difference between ‘Needs’ and ‘Wants’. Ask pupils to look at their ideas again and decide which are ‘needs’ and which are ‘wants’. Encourage pupils to think about family, shelter, safety, education, play, medicine, friendship etc.
  • Put the pupils into small groups and ask them to produce a list of ‘well-being’ indicators. They believe to be the most important. Each idea should be written on a sticky note. Now ask them to rank their ideas in a diamond formation, in order of how important they are. Place the most important indicator at the top, followed by a row of the next two, then a row of three and so on. Remind them there is not wrong or right answer.
  • Share some of the choices pupils have made and discuss their reasons for making them.
  • Give each group a copy of the activity sheet Well-being indicators this shows examples of well-being indicators identified by two young people in Ethiopia and Peru. Ask them to compare their group’s responses with those of these young people. Then have a class discussion using the reflection and evaluation questions below.

Reflection and evaluation

  • What similarities and differences are there between the class / group indicators and those of Seble and Luz?
  • Why do you think there are similarities?
  • Why do you think there are differences?
  • Do you think everyone in the world has the same things they need to be ‘well’? If not, why not?
  • Do you think everyone in Scotland has the same things they need to be ‘well’?

This activity it adapted from Every One counts.

Funded by oxfam logo Scottish Government