Ello Ello! For our last project before the holiday break was “Revolutions on Trial” in this project we look sat famous revolutions in history. We ended up each being assigned a revolution that we would either for or against (defence and prosecution) I ended up on the American prosecution team which I throughly enjoyed but this project doesn’t start there.

We actually started this project with a fun little simulation called “Nation X” in this we separated into two classes and in those classes we were separated into smaller groups.  These different groups represent class levels in society each one having a different salary and task: Firstly was group A, the lowest class getting only 1$ dollar per day and having next to no rights. Their task was doing things  like trash collecting and policing groups at night. Group B was the middle class they were making 5$ dollars a day. They were the shop keepers of the group which basically mean they were the only selling group in the whole “country” which helped them make a lot more money they as well had very few rights. Groups C and D on the other hand had rights to do anything they wanted and had absolute power, they disturbed the money, created new rules, decide who got medicine and such so they were basically the rulers of the country. After a little bit of unfair ruling some of the civilian started to revolt and and protest against the leaders. I was the leader for group B and ran the shop most of time so I didn’t really partake in the riots and such. When a flu broke out groups C & D called for each group leader to create a council of sorts. The idea of the council was that each leader of the group would be able to sign off on the rule – this would make sure rights and benefits would be equal between groups. Once the simulation was done we wrote a personal reflection on how we thought the simulation went, what went well, what we could have done better at, etc.

Next we took a look at book Animal Farm by George Orwell. This book connected to our unit because it focused on a revolution. This revolution was about the animals on a farm revolting against their “owner”, the book ends with them being in worse conditions because of the rule they were taken under. Now if you’re wondering “Ines what does a revolution staring farm animals have to do with historical revolutions?”  That’s simple! A) They’re both revolutions & B) They both follow the Crane Brinton theory!

The Crane Brinton theory is the laws a revolution follows it’s sort of like a story line in a TV show or movie, like so:

 

 

This shows the format a revolution follows or the outline of a revolution.

Then, like in every project, we created a MindNode. This was like our personal hub of information that we found that could help us win the trial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we started working more towards our end goal, the trial. This included things like graphic organizers in both groups and one as a full group and an affidavit. The affidavit held all of our groups information on what we would be using in the trail: Witness statements, evidence, historical documents, information from out MindNode’s, key information, and more. Once these were done we sent them to the other group to let them know what we had found for information (they sent us ours as well).

Once that was done we were able to start on our script. The script took a couple classes to complete seeing as though we had to organize roles and had to edit it over and over. Once the script was finished we started our mock trails, mapping things out and starting to really get into the flow of the project.

 

Finally it was the night of the exhibition (my first one) and my group went first and we ended up winning! It overall was really fun way to learn about revolutions and the different outcomes they had, I wonder what the world would have been like if these revolutions didn’t happen!

Thanks for reading,

Ines