MUN is a student run-simulation of the legislative process of the United Nations. Each student chooses a global issue (Syrian Civil War is pictured above) and a country to represent. The delegates spend two days declaring their positions on the issue, debating, and working to come up with resolutions on the topic.
Position PaperEach delegate writes a position paper that answers four questions: What is the history of my topic? What has been my country's involvement with this topic? What actions has the global community taken in relation to this topic? And what recommendations does my country have for future global actions? The position paper is a culminating activity for the students' research on their topic and country, but it is also a resource that students use to get ready for debate. This work was chunked so that the students work on each paragraph separately. For each paragraph, we provided outlines and sentence starters.
To the right, you can see the exemplar that I wrote for this project, as well as a student example that fully answers all four of the proposed questions. |
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MUN Structure and ProcedureFor me, the most interesting part of MUN is its student-led nature. Before the project even begins, students apply to be Chairs and Secretaries General. Chairs are charged with the task of knowing enough about their topic and every country within their committee to be able to provide informed guidance and evaluation to every Delegate in their committee(about 18 students). The Secretaries General were tasked with the same but for all six committees.
While the opportunity for challenge is an exciting part of this structure, the best part is what it does for the class as a whole The ownership that the Chairs and Secretaries General feel towards the project spreads out to the rest of the class. The content we tackled during MUN was complex, the procedure was arcane, but our engagement was the highest it's been all year. On the left, you can see an example of this work as a couple of Chairs lead a lesson on MUN debate procedure. |