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Review by Trial

 

Workshop Description:

 

Getting students to read is probably, in my opinion, one of the hardest parts about being a teacher. Getting them to then enjoy what they are reading? That can often be like pulling teeth. As a ninth/tenth grade ELA teacher, I want my students to enjoy what they are reading, and the one strategy that I try to implore is to make my students become a part of what they are reading. To review stories in my classroom, I script a review by trial, which basically means, I take the characters from the stories being read in class and put them on trial. In this lesson/review, students not only take on roles of the characters but also roles of lawyers, so an added bonus is a brief lesson on the judicial system (but more on the level of Judge Judy). The first story I adapted into a trial was Of Mice and Men, and my students loved it. They felt that by playing the parts of various characters in the book, as well as watching their classmates role-play, helped them to better understand the motives of the individual characters as well as the plot of the story as a whole. In this workshop, I would discuss why this activity can be useful, how it can be implemented to stories for various grade levels, and how it utilizes a higher level of thinking than a standard review does. I will provide an example of a script I have used, discuss how it is often necessary to adapt a story to fit the needs of a trail, and lastly have participants brainstorm on how they could design a review by trial for their own class. 

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Target Group:

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9-12  Literature Teachers

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