Aimed at 14-16 year olds, the Rax Citizenship Toolkit is a brilliant resource designed to accompany students through the key processes of Citizenship Studies. It gives teachers and students the tools for:

- Critical thinking and enquiry: questioning, researching, reflecting and evaluating

- Advocacy and representation: speaking up for an issue that you think is important

- Taking informed and responsible action: creating successful active citizenship campaigns

Through the use of games and activities, all presented in visually stimulating design, students will improve their confidence and social skills and make meaningful and effective practical work.





Most citizenship material is predictable and prescriptive, making students feel they are being dictated to about the issues they should be concerned by. The toolkit takes a different approach, using a graphic style that engages with students on their level, and facilitating the development of all the tools students need to form their own opinions about the issues they care about most. Avoiding the all-to-common prescriptive and condescending approach to teaching the subject, it encourages and empowers students to change what they think is wrong in society.

Students will also learn what it means NOT to be an active citizen - or a citizen active only in the games console world populated by zombie raiders and bomb-carrying elves governed by aliens with acid for blood...

Published by New Internationalist, and written by Jamie Kelsey-Fry, a secondary school teacher, writer, filmmaker and singer/songwriter in a string of obscure experimental bands and Anita Dhillon, an accomplished graphic artist in the film industry credited on a number of films including The Bourne Ultimatum, Sunshine, The Wolfman and Never Let Me Go .

You can find a comprehensive review of the book on the Times Educational Supplement website.