Have you ever participated In a courtroom been a lawyer, judge, witness? Because as of last week I have. For this humanities project we had to answer the driving question ”How can we as legal teams determine the effectiveness of a revolution?”. 

I really enjoyed the whole project. There were multiple steps where I learned and showed the curricular competency of continuity and change as well as connecting.

The very first stepping stone we did in order to answer the driving question was Nation X. This was very fun way to be introduced to the ideas of continuity and change. We were trying to make a fair and functional society. We had roles and made decisions that could benefit our society. Right away we could see the impact of decisions we made such as when we overthrew Colton, the King. 

After learning Crane Brinton’s theory of revolutions, we then connected it to the novel Animal Farm and to the revolutions we were assigned. These connections really helped me show my learning in both competencies. For example, for the connecting competency, we had group discussions about Animal Farm and how Crane Brinton’s theory related to it and I shared my opinions during these discussions.  For continuity and change, all the connections helped us see throughout a revolution what stayed the same and what changed. One continuity I noticed was that in every revolution the government system was replaced and by the end of that revolution, the new government was similar to the one before. 

In a group of 5 people, I studied the effectiveness of the Haitian revolution that happened in 1791. I created a graphic organizer to share my understanding of the revolution. Then, we were assigned a mock trial with another group. They were the defense and my group was the prosecution, which meant we had to prove that the revolution was ineffective. Part of the project was finding primary sources from the revolution to make our points. This was difficult for our side of the argument because the letters were mostly about slavery and we were not arguing about slavery. Feeling like our points were not strong enough we took apart everything we did and started to rewrite it. In the end, we worked with the other team, meeting before and after school, in order to improve the overall presentation of both sides. This meant we really had to communicate about our points and talk about our opinions.

Our FIRST PLP exhibition: Mock Trial!

First of all, seeing the other trials helped me compare and contrast between the Haitian revolution and the other three revolutions. Secondly, I found it a really cool experience. Seeing all the research and work shared in that format helped me to see both sides better. Below you can see the video of our trial. I am proud to say that the jury voted in our favour. 

Through this project I learned how legal teams prepared for a trial. Using research skills, communication, creativity we completed a successful mock trial, which then answered the driving question.