Macbeth Mock Trial: Shakespeare and Problem-Based Learning

Do you want to do simulations, trials, and PBL activities, but don’t have time to do the complex design? Would you love to teach the art of both fair and foul argument while balancing the Bard?

This lesson offers any class reading Macbeth (or other Shakespeare plays featuring crime or injury) a chance to put a character on trial. With legal expertise, roles, rules, and procedures, you can teach close reading and argumentation while also having some fun. This unit gives students a chance to play professional roles of attorneys, jurors, judge, bailiff, and journalists as they dive deep into logic and literary analysis. Great for high school students, grades 9-12, and gifted middle schoolers, this unit is for that class of yours needing extra challenge and creative opportunity.

I’ve used mock trials with a variety of readiness levels. Role plays and simulations inspire students in myriad ways. Designed with my colleague, Vincent Agosta, this unit gives you law school expertise plus the wisdom of two English educators who have run simulations with students grades 6–12. As author of NCTE's Teaching Macbeth: A Differentiated Approach (a great companion to this), Romeo and Juliet: A Differentiated Approach, and Teaching Julius Caesar: A Differentiated Approach, I offer high-quality materials for a range of classroom needs.

What you receive:

• Lesson plans for up to two weeks of CCSS-correlated activities (can be condensed or expanded) to help you inspire, coach, and facilitate the entire process. Detailed notes about how to facilitate student agency, problem solving, and suspense, and tips for twists and turns you might encounter.
• Thorough mini-lesson that teaches legal terms and coaches students in finding evidence from the play. See how literary analysis gets interwoven with legal procedure and a practice passage analysis from Macbeth.
• Detailed role play guides and handouts for defense and prosecuting attorneys, judge, bailiff, witnesses, jurors, and journalists. Role card documents for jurors if you run voir dire.
• Handouts for building arguments and finding evidence
• Timed writing prompt and rubric
• Rubric for trial performance

See the preview for full list of materials – over 70 pages