Character Trial: Is the protagonist guilty, justified, or misunderstood?

• Select a text or extract containing a debatable character decision.
• Suggested Texts: The Necklace, The Gift of the Magi, The Lady, or the Tiger?, a Shakespeare scene, or a prescribed text.
• Identify the character who will be placed on trial.
• Share the text digitally or provide printed copies for annotation.
• Create one collaborative Pages case file for each group.
• Pre-load the evidence table shown below into the document.

Introduce the driving question: Is the protagonist guilty, justified, or misunderstood?

Teacher prompt: “Can a person make a wrong decision and still deserve to be understood? What would we need before judging them?”

Invite two or three brief responses. Do not discuss the final judgement yet. Explain that learners will first act as investigators and collect evidence.

1. Read and annotate: Learners read individually or in pairs. They mark actions, dialogue, choices, reactions, and turning points.
2. Collect evidence: Each group adds at least four relevant entries to the collaborative Pages case file.
3. Interpret carefully: Learners explain what each piece of evidence may reveal without presenting assumptions as facts.
4. Challenge interpretations: Each group adds two constructive comments to another group’s entries.

Use prompts such as: “Is this evidence or opinion?”, “Does the action prove intention?”, “Could the other side interpret this differently?”, and “Which detail from the text supports your conclusion?”

Each learner completes this statement independently in Pages:

“At this stage, I think the character is guilty, justified, misunderstood, or morally complex because…”

Clarify that the response is provisional and may change after hearing other interpretations during the trial.

• Prepare prosecution, defence, witness, judge, jury, and court-reporter role cards.
• Create a collaborative Pages trial-brief template for each team.
• Include sections for claim, evidence, reasoning, counterclaim, rebuttal, questions, and closing statement.
• Decide whether one whole-class trial or parallel group trials will be conducted.

Revisit the driving question and explain that the class will now move from investigation to argumentation.

Teacher reminder: “A strong argument is not a list of quotations. It explains how the evidence supports a precise claim.”

1. Sort the evidence: Teams classify evidence as prosecution, defence, or ambiguous evidence that could support both interpretations.
2. Assign roles: Allocate lawyers, witnesses, evidence researchers, judge, jury, and court reporter.
3. Build the case: Each side prepares a precise claim, three strong pieces of evidence, and an explanation for each.
4. Anticipate the opposition: Teams identify one likely counterclaim and prepare a text-based rebuttal.
5. Prepare witness questions: Questions should expose motive, contradiction, pressure, knowledge, or bias rather than test recall.
6. Rehearse: Learners record a brief opening or closing statement in Voice Memos and revise unclear phrasing or delivery.

Weak question: “What did the character do?” Stronger question: “What made the character believe that hiding the truth was the only available option?”

Each team must complete a shared trial brief containing:

• a clear opening claim;
• three selected pieces of evidence with reasoning;
• two purposeful witness questions;
• one anticipated counterclaim and rebuttal; and
• a concise closing statement.

Keynote or Freeform may be used only when a visual argument map helps the group organise the sequence: Claim → Evidence → Reasoning → Counterclaim → Rebuttal.

• Arrange the room for prosecution, defence, witnesses, judge, and jury.
• Prepare a Numbers jury rubric with the agreed assessment criteria.
• Set a strict limit of two or three Keynote evidence slides per side.
• Display or print the order of courtroom proceedings.

Establish courtroom expectations. Remind learners that the purpose is not dramatic performance alone; the quality of textual reasoning is central.

• Challenge ideas, not people.
• Refer to evidence when answering or objecting.
• Listen fully before responding.
• Remain within the information available in the text.

1. Judge opens the trial and states the charge or central question.
2. Prosecution opening statement presents its claim and case direction.
3. Defence opening statement presents an alternative interpretation.
4. Witness questioning allows both sides to probe motive, action, and context.
5. Evidence display uses limited Keynote slides containing only key quotations or incidents.
6. Closing arguments identify the strongest evidence and answer the opposition.
7. Jury deliberation uses the Numbers rubric to compare both arguments.
8. Verdict is announced with one clear evidence-based justification.

Intervene when claims move beyond the text: “Which exact incident, line, or pattern in the text supports that statement?”

Learners write in Pages or record in Voice Memos:

“Did your judgement change during the trial? Identify the evidence or argument that influenced you most and explain why.”

Encourage learners to recognise that literary characters may be morally complex and that a responsible interpretation can acknowledge contradictory evidence.