Fairytale Court Activity for Law Enforcement, Court Systems or Principles of Law

This packet contains everything teachers will need to conduct a fairytale court "trial" for criminal justice students. This is a two-day activity where students will spend Day 1 planning the trial and then will go through the trial process with a script on Day 2. This is one of my students' favorite activities during the school year and completely student-led once trial has started.

Students will play the judge, bailiff, two prosecutors, two defense attorneys, a victim and a defendant as well as jurors and jury foreman. The script contains the proper order and speech for most of court minus the opening & closing statements (student generated) and questions/answers for the two witnesses (student generated). Students will spend Day 1 creating a theory of their side of the case and then create opening & closing statements then a list of questions. Students will be split into two groups to help generate statements and questions.

The packet is mainly word documents but can be easily adapted for Google Classroom via Google docs.

The packet includes:

• Introduction PowerPoint
• List of Roles
• Google Form Link to Vote for Fairytale
• Group Brainstorm for Defense
• Group Brainstorm for Prosecutor
• Handout for Prosecutor
• Handout for Defense Attorneys
• Handout for Jury Foreman
• Handout for Jury members
• Verdict Voting Slips
• Teacher Instructions
• Script for Three Little Pigs
• Script for Beauty & the Beast
• Script for Goldilocks
• Script for Rapunzel
• Script with blanks to adapt for other Fairytales

Note: there is no key for this activity- I only grade on participation.

Check out my website which has daily activities & units listed for criminal justice classes in an easy to navigate format!