These resources have that technical information and skills in the court room that give the students that extra confidence. The continuous referring back to our constitutional rights is also vitally important. The story in this lesson was a creative writing activity reviewing plot development and I wanted to infuse into my social studies a review of the Bill of Rights. I also wanted new material for the middle grades in working with mock trials. The Humpty Dumpty Story used in this lesson was written by Christy Bluhm, a fifth grader of mine in 1988.
Kids can write their own stories that can be used in mock trials or judiciary studies.
The following outlines the procedures that I used. A. Review the simple assault law or any law you wish to learn using a resource person. B. Give a couple of ground rules before the students create their own stories. Ground rules give the student a common point to work from. For example, in my instructions, I state that Humpty Dumpty was to be the victim of a simple assault and that there had to be an eye witness.