Fairy Tale Trial - Who Kidnapped Cinderella and Prince Charming?

Who Kidnapped Cinderella & Prince Charming?

I've always wanted to have a mock trial with my class, but I never could figure out exactly how I wanted to approach it...so, like other good ideas it was relegated to that elusive "Someday" category.  Then I was browsing Teachers Pay Teachers, and I stumbled across Kathleen Applebee's "Game: Fairy Tale Wedding (Mystery Activity)"   (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Game-Fairy-Tale-Wedding-Mystery-Activity-Package) I finally found something that I could work with!

She has the activity set up more like a Mystery Dinner Theater - where students have a dossier to study and become that character.  She sets out food for the day of the event and lets students wander and talk to each other.  Then she passes out forms for the students to say guess who did it. It sounds like a lot of fun, but I have 32 students, and I wanted something a little more formal.  I took her wonderful dossiers and assigned each part to two students.  They had to decide which one would play the character and which one would be the defense attorney for that character.  Each character knows what they had been doing the night before and the morning that the two went missing  (right before their wedding, of course) as well as a little information about a couple of the other characters.  That is a great starting point to start asking questions.  

Here's how I set it up:  

There were 14 characters - I assigned two students to each character.  That was 28 roles.  The characters were all from other fairy tales, such as Jack & the Beanstalk, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Rapunzel, The Pied Piper, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Beauty & the Beast, Rumplestiltskin, The Three Little Pigs, and Little Red Riding Hood.  We did take some time talking about these fairy tales and the genre before we began.

I still had 4 more students, so I made them the king and his guards.  I wrote a separate dossier for the king, and I gave these students the two additional reports brought in by the king's guards.  No one was allowed to share their dossier with anyone else.  

The students had to come up with questions for all of the other characters - questions that they could ask at trial to get the right information.  No one but the guilty was allowed to lie, but they were encouraged to stretch the truth or embellish.  They also had to try to figure out the types of questions that there character might be asked, and come up with plausible reasons for their actions.

Students were encouraged to dress as their character or as the attorney - it added to the spirit of the event and made it all the more fun!

Trial Kings

Trial Characters

Trial Attorneys

The Trial:

Each student was called to the stand and sworn in.  Then each attorney asked one question, followed by each of the four kings asking a question as well.  Once the character was fully questioned, the defense attorney could ask three questions to explain away some facts that might make their character look guilty.  The attorneys had to ask questions - not testify.  Even if they knew something, they had to ask the right question to get the character to say what they were getting at.  The students did an amazing job asking good questions, listening for important details, and staying in character!  There was so much learning packed into this fun activity - Genre - Fairy Tales, Character Development and Character Traits, Asking Good Questions, Listening Skills, Deductive Reasoning!  

What a fun day - and tons of learning to boot!!!!