Summer SAVY 2017, Session 1/Day 2- Introduction to Law (Rising 6th/7th)
Today, students worked in groups to present U.S. Supreme Court cases (that they had chosen as a group) in creative ways. Some performed skits, while others utilized art work. They all did very well and showed a thorough and nuanced understanding of their cases. After they finished their group projects we did a mini unit pertaining to criminal law since students had expressed some interest in learning about criminal law. They were taught about elements of crimes and how to distinguish one from the other, (i.e. manslaughter from murder). They also were taught some of the differences between civil trials and criminal trials and the parties involved. After the mini unit on criminal law they were given the opportunity to take on the role of U.S. Supreme Court justices who are reconsidering the death penalty and whether it should remain constitutional or not.
The final part of class involved an introduction to the next area that we will be focusing on for the next couple of days, torts. They were taught about how torts are civil wrongs for which there are legal remedies (i.e. monetary damages). The first tort to which they were introduced is negligence. The students really caught on quite easily to the elements of negligence and seemed to enjoy answering the negligence hypos I had composed. They appeared to have a really good understanding of how one would prove that a person was negligent, along with defenses to negligence as well. At the end of class they were each assigned to a group and each group will do a presentation relating to one of the elements of negligence: duty, breach, causation, and injury/damages. They can utilize skits, songs, hypos or any other creative method to illustrate the particular element. They seemed excited about the assignment and will continue to work on it tomorrow, Wednesday, which is also when they will present.
Mrs. Goins, JD
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