I hope you have found the "Crime and Punishment" unit enriching and dare I say, enjoyable? In today's lesson, you will write a reflection on your learning points for the unit. Think about the new knowledge and skills that you have acquired over the last eight weeks or so. You can organise the learning points into separate categories such as
(a) information about legal punishment (philosophy, case studies, arguments for and against etc.)
(b) skills (critical reading, comprehension answering techniques, summary skills, top level structure for essay, scripting for voice recording, use of VoiceThread etc.)
(c) soft skills (collaboration, effective presentation skills, note-taking etc.)
The important thing is not to provide a comprehensive list of your newfound skills and knowledge but to reflect deeply on one or two learning points. Make the learning point meaningful. You can also indicate how you would like to proceed. For instance, work on enlarging your vocabulary through reading two novels, keeping a daily journal, learning 10 new words everyday etc.
Extension activity
Having studied the underlying tenets for legal punishment and the various debates surrounding the myriad of applications from the death sentence, to corporal punishment to life imprisonment to forms of restorative justice for juvenile offenders, let's broaden our understanding of the topic a little more by thinking about a point raised in the comprehension test passage. The writer of the second passage criticised American Law for not being adequately developed to handle what he terms as "excusing conditions" which are sometimes called "mitigating circumstances", "extenuating circumstances", and specific instances may include insanity, temporary insanity etc. You are invited to do a little more research on this area and post your findings (don't cut and paste and remember to acknowledge source) using this thread.
Lastly, some countries allow women, children and the elderly to receive lighter sentences than men for the same offences committed, why is this the case? The astute among you will point out that my generalisation is applicable only to modern democracies and secular states and that this hasn't always been the case. You would be right of course! So let me invite you to answer the question posed above. You can provide evidence to explain and support to affirm the statement or offer counter examples to prove that I am indeed making a generalisation.
I look forward to reading scintillating nuggets of information and brilliant expositions on the topic. Don't disappoint me!
Please label your response as "Reflections" or "Extension".
Monday, March 29, 2010
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