Due to being in the Special Education program at the University of Mary Washington, our project consists of a lesson plan that has been designed for 11th grade students and is centered around John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men. Wanting to present a lesson that is engaging and strategic, we decided to incorporate the jury trial system into the lesson. Each student will be given a copy of Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men and as they read the book, students will be taught how the legal system/jury trial system works. Students will then take what they have learned and will be asked to apply it to the novel. In order for students to apply it to the novel, they will be broken into groups and will be assigned roles. Instead of solely focusing on characters and their disabilities, students will think about the events that occur within the book and the classroom will be turned into a courtroom. Throughout Steinbeck’s novel, there are many “alleged” crimes committed and students will use information within the book to design court cases. In order to best assess the events within the book, students will be asked to focus on one event and to assign roles, such as defense attorney, prosecuting attorney, plaintiff, defendant, and witnesses to members within their groups. After assessing the crimes that have occurred, students will then be able to form a court case and prepare for a jury trial. Assessing students is an important aspect of being a teacher and in order to do so, we will turn the classroom into a courtroom and have the students present their cases. After the trials, teachers can grade students based on preparation, execution, persuasiveness of arguments, evidence, and level of seriousness.
The lesson plan created encourages students to think outside of the box and further analyze. There are aspects, such as disabilities, for students to consider when designing their court case and holding a trial. While the majority of the characters within the novel could be tried for specific actions, students need to consider how the character’s emotions and disabilities affected their actions. As an example, Lennie could be placed on trial for “murdering” Curley’s wife, but students need to determine if Lennie’s actions were due to his disability or if he meant to kill her. However, it will be interesting to see how students react to the events within the novel and whether decisions will be altered to accommodate disabilities that are present within.
Another aspect, as teachers, to consider is the fact that there are students with high functioning disabilities present within the classroom. In order to make sure that they understand and feel comfortable with the assignment, they will be placed in groups with students that have strong English abilities. Having students with disabilities present and involved in the trials will give other students in the classroom insight, which will hopefully better assist them with making decisions. Having diversified groups will impact the final decisions and will allow students to best analyze the situations they are dealing with.
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I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work. – Taylor Butler & Samantha Rogers
I really love this. This sounds like such a fun way to be engaged in reading the text and I’m sure any students participating in the “trials” would love it!