Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Law and Criminality Reflection

We the year 10 learns have been studying about law and criminality for a few weeks. In the last few weeks we were given small assignments and tasks to compete both individually and in groups. Writing an argument either for or against the death penalty, creating a Facebook page for a famous criminal, having a practise trial and etc are just some of the many tasks that we have completed in this unit. This was a new topic for me and I have learnt many interesting things that I didn’t know about before.


I have learnt about the death penalty in more depth. I learnt that it’s a topic that is being widely debated everyday as many people have different opinions about it. In this topic one interesting thing I learnt how to do was look at both sides of an argument (consider the alternatives) before making a final decision.


Some of the skills I developed where research and discussion. I researched a lot on the death penalty and when I did find information I shared my ideas with my classmates. I worked with others, exchanged information with my friends and we also had small practise debates and discussions about law and criminality. To help me understand the facts and information I collected more clearly I talked to my teachers.


I feel that after the two representatives from Amnesty International came in and gave us an over view on the death penalty I found it much easier to research as I found more organisations that were for and against the death penalty. I found it easy to work in groups because we all helped each other research information. One thing I found quite hard was narrowing down all my information I had found, as a lot of it was very important. It did take me some time to finally decide what research I would keep and what research I would get rid of.


Three things that my team did well in the lead up to the trial were worked well together, listened to each other’s ideas and shared information. We all split the work into sections and each group member was assigned a certain role. After we finished our research we then discussed what we had found. We all shared our ideas and each person listened carefully in a thoughtful and respectful manner.


Three things that my team members did well on the day of the trial were encourage each other, support each other and research when more information was needed to support our statements.


On the day of the trial one thing I feel that I did well was present all my information in an appropriate and mature manner that supported my statements. Though I had a paper in front of me but I did not constantly look down and read from it, as I made sure that I made eye contact with the audience, the jurors, the cross examiners and everyone that was present in the room.


In the future I would like my GP team to work towards achieving a more positive side and meeting deadlines and not rushing through things at the last minute.


Next time I work on something similar to this in any other subject I would like to make sure that I am constantly aware of what’s going on around me and contributing more to make the given task more successful.


Before we started learning about law and criminality the death penalty had never crossed my mind so in conclusion I would like to say that it was a great new learning experience that I will never forget.

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