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Students Go On Trial
Posted: 23rd May 2018Young people were put on trial for a motoring offence…but found the experience educational.
Year 8 students at Royal Docks Academy, acted out a mock trial as part of their citizenship lessons.
Students took on the roles of defendant, defence solicitor, prosecutor, clerk, judge, jury and witnesses after learning about the structure of a court and case proceedings.
Jermaine Mitchell was the clerk. He said: “My role as clerk was to make sure the court was settled, that the jury members were ok and to help the judge.
“I have learnt that a court is not what I expected and that there are a lot of different roles involved which I had not realised.”
Before the mock trial, the class had been learning about crime and punishment.
Sereena Lewis, trainee teacher, said: “By way of assessing what they had been learning, we held a mock trial. The students spent time before the trial learning about the structure of court and getting their questions together. We put them through judges training and those with the most correct answers were given the role of judge.
“I hope they now understand more about court proceedings and what makes credible evidence, as well as the types of questions they needed to ask to get to the truth.
“It went really well and I am very proud of them for standing up and doing it, even though some were quite nervous about it. It gave them a sense of independence as they each had their own role to prepare and act out.”