We thought our topic should be based on something we are used to hearing about and seeing, which is also directly related to citizenship. The topic we ended up settling on was drugs.

My contribution

I contributed in many ways, for example I helped my group come up with ideas on how to collect information about children who take drugs, although it wasn’t my job. I also gave ideas on what sort of questions we had to ask in our questionnaire as well as cutting down the amount of questions we asked due to the fact that we were asking children thus asking too many questions may bore them a little.

However my overall main role in this group was to do research on drugs, get information about drugs and how it can or has affected people. In doing this I had to go out of my time to go to libraries in and also out of school to gather as much information as possible in addition to my internet resources to make my resources as strong as possible. Knowing so many facts about drugs I thought it would be a good idea to make a poster which will advise children not to use or deal with them.

Contribution of others  

Each member of the group had a different job or contribution to our team work. Sameer was the leader of our group he made all the meetings strictly and we knew we could not miss any of them as we agreed to accept punishment if we did not attend a single meeting. He was also the one who made sure we didn’t spend too much time fooling about as it would disrupt the flow of our work. As well as that Sameer also keep the minutes and made sure we always tried our best to keep ahead of time. Julian on the other hand was the one that made the questionnaires and surveys to see how many children use drugs and how they get into them. He also had to go out of his time to ask people from different areas along with me once in a while, for example we asked children from our school, around his area, Sameer area, my area and also others.

Section 2

Activities

1. Firstly we went into groups we thought would suit us which we would not be disturbed by any members which may have been friends. We also tried to make sure our group had an equal balance e.g. an intelligent member and a member good with computers and one with a lot of street life experience.
2. Secondly our citizenship teacher asked us to select a topic to do our project on, so as a group we selected the topic we thought would be most suitable for us according to our age and interests.
3. We then selected which members of the group would be doing what. I did research and the main design for a poster, Sameer did minutes and since he was the most mature he was also group leader arranging meeting and giving the final word and Julian made all the questionnaires and all surveys.
4. The next lesson we had access to the I.T room which allowed me to start my core research.
5.  

The main reason why we picked the topic drugs is because we know as a groups it is one of the main cases dealt with for young children especially in areas around us nowadays and we thought it would be a good idea to let as many children as possible know this and to try as best they can to keep away from them. We also took this into our hands because we know that as children sending out a poster will attract others to look, because we know children’s interest more and so will be able to make it as eye catching as possible which will be more useful than if an adult attempted to do it. After researching we have a lot of knowledge on drug and know what is wrong.

Section Three

Websites

Videos

• Love story
• Under pressure
• House party gone wild

Books

• Buzzed
• From chocolate to Morphine

Booklets

• Drug awareness journal

I looked at a lot of websites to get as much information as possible. There were two websites which helped me get good information which I could cut down into brief for my poster. They helped me get an exact description on how each drug affects the body long and short term. Some websites had easier and more explanations whereas others had longer descriptions explaining in detail everything that was needed to understand. Since they were explained in rather mature context I myself had to change how the points were explain and make it clearer and easier with all the important pars of information involved.