Kiana Shirley & Diane Bukowski

Nearpod Lesson- Court Trials

Overview: Students learned about how trials worked. They used evidence to support their analysis of three famous trials and their outcomes. Students then considered how social perception of defendants may have affected the trials' verdicts.

After learning about the trials, students predicted whether they thought the accused were innocent or guilty, responded to open-ended questions to provide evidence to support their predictions, and shared their thoughts on whether they felt the verdicts were fair. 

Nearpod Specifics: Ms. Bukowski and Ms. Shirley decided to incorporate Nearpod into their Courtroom Trials lesson. Students were given a join code and joined the Nearpod session on their laptops. The lesson began with defining three courtroom terms: prosecution, defendant, and reasonable doubt. Trial #1 was presented to the students and they read an excerpt to learn about the crime. Students then responded to a Nearpod Poll to predict if the accused was innocent or guilty. The data was looked at right away to see what percent voted each way. That was followed by an Open-Ended prompt in Nearpod that asked students, "What evidence do you have to support your prediction?" Once all evidence was discussed as a class, Ms. Bukowski and Ms. Shirley shared the actual outcome of the trial. The students were then asked, in a Collaborate Board in Nearpod, "Was the verdict fair? Why or why not?" Students' responses were shown on the board, which can be done with or without students' names in Nearpod, and the whole class discussed the responses.

This Nearpod lesson increased student engagement and 100% of students actively participated. Students were able to learn about courtroom trials while having fun, thinking deeply, and having rich discussions.

Check out their students using Nearpod during the lesson!

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