Villain Defence Any Book Novel Study Culminating Assignment (Grade 7/8)

This culminating activity for your novel study unit, will help students learn about analyzing texts, bias, summarizing important information in order to make their own conclusions, as well as understand point of view and perspective. For this activity students will be taking on the role as a lawyer, who will defend one of the villains within the story. They will have to identify what laws the villain broke and what the punishment may be for breaking those laws. Then as the lawyer they will have to consider the point of view from the story and the possible bias that this perspective provides. Students will then use quotes, identify mitigating factors, and create character witness statements on behalf of the villain. As the lawyer they will also have to come up with a new proposed sentence. To make this assignment more fun and interactive, I have included presentation instructions for either the whole class or small groups. The viewers of the presentation will act as the ‘jury’ and will get to vote on weather they believe the new charge is a more appropriate punishment after hearing the case that was built. I have included everything that you need to run this activity smoothly in your classroom. This assignment meets C1.6, C2.6, and C3.3 of the Ontario Language Curriculum, but is suitable for any middle school classroom!

Includes:

• 20 pages total
• Teacher’s guide
• Student instructions
• Important terms
• Character analysis graphic organizer
• Jury bias identification
• Point of view brainstorming
• Case evidence against the villain
• Building a case to defend the villain (positive quotes from the text, mitigating factors, character witnesses)
• Building a new proposed sentence
• Jury voting cards (students vote on the new proposed sentence)
• 2 pages of reflection questions
• Student checklist for before submitting
• Marking rubric to make your life easier

I put a lot of time into creating these resources and hope that you and your students enjoy!