8th Grade English Curriculum - Twelve Angry Men

Unit Summary

Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men takes us into the jury room as twelve men deliberate to reach a verdict in a murder trial. Through various tensions between jury members in the room, Rose exposes the ugliness of prejudice and flaws in the American justice system. As this unit follows To Kill a Mockingbird, students will continue to analyze how objective facts are often colored by personal attitudes and experiences. Ultimately, however, Reginald Rose’s message is a hopeful one; the jurors vote in favor of the defendant, and justice prevails.

In this unit, students continue to hone their annotation skills as they examine how a playwright makes deliberate decisions to manipulate the characters and mood through dialogue and stage directions. One important focus is getting students in the habit of reading at home, tying their ability to participate in the daily acting of the play to their homework completion. By the end of this unit, students will be able to 1) explain the principles of “reasonable doubt” and “innocent until proven guilty,” 2) explain the strengths and weaknesses of the American jury system, 3) describe the different types of persuasion—rational and emotional—as used by different jurors and explain which proves to be most effective, and 4) explain how personal prejudices obscure the truth in a jury room.

While the play was written in the throes of the civil rights movement, it continues to pertain today as we reassess whether America is truly a model of justice and equality. Twelve Angry Men raises timeless questions about the different kinds of biases, the confusing concept of truth, and the value of reason and logic within the American legal system.

Texts and Materials

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Core Materials

Book: Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose (Penguin Classics, 2006)

Supporting Materials

Resource: Protections in Our Justice System
Article: “Reasonable Doubt” by The Economist
Video: “12 Angry Men (2/10) Movie CLIP - It's the Same Knife! (1957) HD” by Movieclips
Video: “12 Angry Men (5/10) Movie CLIP - Re-enactment (1957) HD” by Movieclips
Video: “12 Angry Men (7/10) Movie CLIP - Down & In (1957) HD” by Movieclips
Video: “12 Angry Men Great Scene” by Thodoris Exonox
Video: “The Scars of Stop and Frisk” by Julie Dressner and Edwin Martinez (New York Times) (Optional)
Article: “Justice for All? Teaching About Crime and Punishment in America” by Tom Marshall and Michael Gonchar (The Learning Network)
Article: “Scientists Trace Memories of Things That Never Happened” by James Gorman (New York Times, 2013) (optional)
Article: “The Purposes of Criminal Punishment” by Amanda Dollack
Essay: “Evaluating an Argument: 12 Angry Men” by Mark Nunez

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Assessment

This assessment accompanies Unit 8 and should be given on the suggested assessment day or after completing the unit.

Download Content Assessment

Unit Prep

Intellectual Prep

Suggestions for how to prepare to teach this unit

For acting purposes in class, teachers should print out placards, from the supporting materials, with each juror number for students to wear or place on their desks in order for everyone to keep track of the characters.
Students benefit from a field trip with this unit to a local courthouse in order to experience the setting as described in the play.
Read and annotate the Unit Summary and Essential Questions.
Read and annotate the text with essential questions in mind.
Take unit assessment. Focus on questions 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 (central idea/theme); 4 (symbolism); and 6 (stage directions). Write the mastery response to essay question.
Unit plan lessons that align directly with test:
1. lessons 2, 5, 6, 10 (central idea/theme/the duty of the jury)
2. lesson 8 (symbolism)
3. lessons 8, 9, 10 (stage directions)
4. lessons 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 (essential questions)
Grade the Target Tasks of lessons 2, 6, 8, 9

Essential Questions

The central thematic questions addressed in the unit or across units

What is the task of the jury?
In the justice system, what is the meaning and significance of the concept of reasonable doubt?
How does prejudice interfere in the course of justice?
What strengths and weaknesses of the jury system does the play bring to light? What do you think the playwright’s opinion about the system is?

Writing Focus Areas

Specific skills to focus on when giving feedback on writing assignments

Students will continue to dissect the prompt by breaking it into parts in order to fully grasp the questions before starting their outline and draft pages. They will focus on fine-tuning their introductions with clear thesis statements that answer the prompt and preview reasons that will be addressed in the body paragraphs. They will also work on varying their transitions in order to enhance the flow of the entire essay. Importantly, students will focus on the analyses in their body paragraphs in which they will summarize the evidence, provide a “mini quote” focusing on diction within the evidence, and explain how the evidence proves their claims.

Spiraling Literary Analysis Writing Focus Area

W.1a (lead)

Stated their claim and previewed reasons that accurately support the claim
Got their readers to care by including a cool fact or jazzy question about topic
Matched the organization of the body paragraphs in the Introduction
Interested readers in their argument and helped them to understand the backstory through purposeful word choice

W.1b,d (elaboration)

Supported their claim by giving at least three accurate reasons/examples and information to support their reasons, perhaps from a text, their knowledge, or their life, that were parallel and did not overlap
Discussed and explained the way that the evidence went with the claim in at least two sentences
Put reasons in an order that would be most convincing
Provided context for evidence/introduced quotations
Made choices about how to angle evidence to support main points.

W.1c (transitions)

Consistently used transitions in order to introduce new body paragraphs, evidence, and explanation, and used transitions within explanation when appropriate
Used transitions to lead readers across parts of the text and relate to earlier parts (despite this, as stated earlier, by doing so, etc.)

Vocabulary

Literary terms, text-based vocabulary, idioms and word parts to be taught with the text

Literary Terms

(all review words) monologue, irony, symbolism, stage directions, dialogue

Roots and Affixes

mono-, pre-, ver-

Text-based

Vocabulary from the text: drab (p. 6), unanimous (p. 6), entitled (p. 7 and p. 27), hesitant (p. 8), coincidence (p. 23), compulsive (p. 31), sanctimonious (p. 47), sadist (p. 47), avenge (p. 53), sincere (p. 53), infallible (p. 58), prejudice (p. 66), safeguard (p. 66), tumultuous (from article)

Academic vocabulary: justice, defendant, prosecution, impartial jury, pre-meditated homicide (murder), charge, convicted, sentence, testimony, deliberate, verdict, reasonable doubt, unanimous verdict

Idioms and Cultural References

“To pull stories out of thin air” (p. 42)

Supporting All Students

In order to ensure that all students are able to access the texts and tasks in this unit, it is incredibly important to intellectually prepare to teach the unit prior to launching the unit. Use the intellectual preparation protocol and the Unit Launch to determine which support students will need. To learn more, visit the Supporting all Students teacher tool.