Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew.
My family enjoys looking at issues from all sides and considering every angle – that’s why we were excited for the opportunity to review the Homeschool Court Student Worktext from Homeschool Court.
This student text – my copy is a digital .pdf – comprises of 108 pages. It is very organized and structured, describing the purpose of mock trials and how the American court system works in a detailed way. This workbook walks students through these steps and includes history, vocabulary, and spaces for writing. That’s perfect, because you could easily print out this book and use it as a curriculum for a co-op or special event. Teacher materials are available, and they even detail how to teach this at the high school level for credit.
This text isn’t the only one available. A teacher manual is available for the student worktext, as well as supplemental material for students and three case files (with teacher guides) for final work.
I appreciate the layout of the student worktext. Not only is it structured well, but it’s designed with students in mind. With white space that clearly points to chunks of text as primary and large spaces for writing, it’s useable for a wide range of students and abilities.
This curriculum was designed by a lawyer, so you can be sure that it’s accurate according to her courtroom and legal expertise. We appreciated that – and also the flexibility written into it. As per the book, one could work through the student text at several different schedules, but then the summative mock trials could take different forms. One could hold an actual, physical trial with lots of players, but students could also write a paper about how it might work.
Our family chose to discuss it. After reading material from the book and the Forging Mama’s Signature: Validity of a Will Student Case Summary, we set up shop in our living room to discuss the case. We quickly realized that while everyone agreed on a case outcome, the reasoning wasn’t the same. My Big Helper, My Little Man, and DH all took turns explaining their rationales for each step of the case, and sometimes it got rather heated! My people all got really into this case. While they agreed on what happened, they had each focused on different evidence. This rather intense discussion helped everyone dig into the case, discussing details of the law and the evidence. I love when people get so excited about learning!
Personally, I found the case to have many more details and to be murkier than I expected! Of course, it’s difficult to debate something that’s completely straightforward, but I was happily surprised to find just how complex it was. That makes it very flexible and adaptable to a wide range of grades. It will work well for most middle- and high-school students.
I was also happy to discover that the case studies provided for the summative mock trials are real cases! What better way to study the law and the court system than with the real thing? There’s also great variety in the case studies. Besides this forgery case, there’s also one about school prayer and a dog bite.
The teacher materials that came with each case study were very helpful. As legal matters are very low on my knowledge scale, I found it helpful to read about the details of the case before my family met to discuss it. This not only helped me to follow their fast-moving discussion but also to be able to answer questions and help as needed.
While it may be obvious that adults would need to be involved in the mock trials, adults are intended to be rather central to the entire curriculum. The worktext does provide ways for students to do much of the work themselves, with the teacher simply checking over student answers, but there is much fodder and potential for discussion. This could be a great way to take the work deeper and to personalize it for your own particular students. In this way it would make an excellent text for co-ops or for whole family use like mine, when students are close together in age.
Our chosen schedule worked well for our family, but while there are suggested schedules included in the manual, you are not limited to these. The author, Deborah Morris Burton is willing to work with buyers to help customize her course so that it will be a great fit for your family’s needs.
All in all, I think that these Homeschool Court materials are excellent options for students interested in legal matters or for use as part of a civics class – but don’t take my word for it. Click here to read other reviews of Homeschool Court.
