Creative Lesson Plan (Coral Secondary School)

I was introducing the idea of different perspectives on an issue/topic.

I framed the entire class as a court session whereby famous criminals would be tried and given one chance to explain their side of the story. I used "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" as a trigger to show how a different perspective could be formed.

I introduced the other criminals: Stepmother of Cinderella, Witch in Hansel and Gretel, Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, Wolf in The Little Red Riding Hood, the Pied Piper, the Queen in Snow White.

The class was broken into six legal teams, each taking on the case for one of the criminals. Roles for the students included: legal assistants (scribe, confidentiality keeper, administrative executive), lawyers (legal representative, head of team), and the client. The teams discussed how to best tell the criminal's side of the story to place the client in a favourable light. At the end, they presented to the class, and the class would vote for whether or not the criminal was guilty or innocent.

Students were very excited and participated actively throughout the lesson. At the end, they understood that one story could have different perspectives. When touching on the theme of animal experimentation in Mrs. Frisby, they could easily identify different perspectives and why these differences occurred.