A court room is a place people go to declare answers, on Wednesday December 15th we decided if specific revolutions were guilty or not guilty. I am excited for you to read this humanities post because the project we just finished I really enjoyed. For this project the driving questions was β€˜How might we, as legal teams, determine the effectiveness of a Revolution?’. So to answer that, we can to do lots of research, create a strong case, and most importantly work together as a team. We did this and in the end created a court room to present trials on specific revolutions and then let the jury determine the answer. But to get to that final point there were many stepping stones that we completed.

Nation X Simulation:

At the very start of this project we did this very fun simulation called Nation X. In Nation X we were put into different groups as if we were different classes during a real revolution. I was put into the lowest class aka group A. Our job was to write about our daily lives everyday writing at least 100 words, this also had to include a word count any the bottom of the page. All while this was happening we were only getting paid $1 per day. We spent a few classes playing Nation X. I found this very fun because we got to engage in an activity as a class, and had to work through many problems such as inequality as if it were a real life revolution. Throughout Nation X we followed our different our specific groups rights and what was against the law. Then once we finished the simulation we wrote a reflection on it, here is mine.

Crane Brinton & Animal Farm:

Revolutions can make dramatic changed in a society and can either end peacefully or in war.Β  That is what I learned during the beginning of this project while reading the novel Animal Farm. During the first 3 or so weeks of this project we started and finished the whole animal farm novel and came to class with discussion questions ready. This novel helped me understand revolutions in a different perspective. I liked the discussion part of the day because I got to listen what other people thought and what they predicted. We had some great conversations and there were also mini challenges within the discussions like silent discussions where you wrote down your thoughts on a paper and passed it around. Then once we finished the book we wrote a 3 paragraph essay how it connected to Crane Brinton’s Stages of Revolution.Β 

Crane Brinton’s theory is something we learned about at the same time that we were reading Animal Farm. After we finished learning about his theory we created a diagram representing the four stages of revolution. I first created my diagram in procreate then ended up revising it because I realized it did not really make any sense, here is my multi paragraph essay and my final diagram.

French Revolution:

After learning about revolutions in general, we were put into our revolution groups. There were four revolutions and two groups for each one, French, American, Haitian, and Xinhai. I got into the French Revolution group. We then started learning about our revolution both as a group and by ourselves and gathered the needed information to created our own individual graphic organizers. Our graphic organizers could be created in any app we wanted, but I chose Notability because you can not only type but also easily draw. These are the things we needed to include.

β€’ Revolution Name & DateΒ 

β€’ Underlying Conditions (Incubation Stage)Β 

β€’ Key Triggers (What was the tipping point of this revolution? Crisis Stage)

β€’ Key Characters (Name at least two individuals of note)Β 

β€’ Effectiveness of the RevolutionΒ 

β€’ Ineffectiveness of the RevolutionΒ 

β€’ Continuity and Change (How did this revolution change this society? What stayed the same?)

After reading lots of textbooks and websites we could start putting it into our own graphic organizer. Then after everyone’s graphic organizers were done we presented them to a partner and received feedback. Then after revising them we split into four person groups with one person from each different revolution. In those groups we presented our graphic organizers to each other. Then after that we met up with the other French Revolution group and created one big graphic organizer. This one was so that we could make sure we all got the same key points down on the French Revolution. We then split back into our groups and were told wether we were going to be on the Defence or Prosecution, I was on the Prosecution. We filled out an affidavit including our names and stuff like the evidence that we used to build our case. After we finished those we swapped them with the other revolution and started to actually build our case, and in this case our script. We worked both together with the whole French Revolution group on the script and just as the Prosecution group. Then about a week and a half later after practicing lines, getting costumes ready, creating the actual court room, and doing a few dress rehearsals we were ready for the exhibition. I am very proud of myself for this part of the project because I not only memorized all my lines for the rehearsal, but I worked well with my team and I am happy with how my graphic organizer turned out. I could have added some more photos to my graphic organizer if I had more space, but I had all the needed information and I snuck in one or two photos.Β 

I am very happy with the outcome of this project, I am proud of both myself for spending lots of time remembering lines (even if I did not have many) and I am proud of the French Prosecution Team for working hard and winning the trial! Before I forget check out the video of the French Revolution Trial down below. I hope you enjoyed my last post for 2021.Β 

P.S-Go check out the rest of the French Prosecution groups blogsΒ Dana, Cole, Cooper, Theryn, and Carter.