Sample Vocabulary Activity
I selected these content-specific words from the opening of the play since students’ understanding of them would be important to understanding the issues raised in the play as a whole: unanimous, verdict, deliberate, double jeopardy, grave, foreman, monopoly.
After discussing Twelve Angry Men in general terms and conducting a check on knowledge about juries, I elaborated on the play using the words in the chart. Copies of the chart were given to the students. Later, as we came across these words in the reading, I stopped and asked for clarification.
| Word | Explanation | Student Comments |
|---|---|---|
| unanimous | In this jury trial, the jurors are told their vote has to be unanimous. This means they all have to agree on whether the boy is guilty or not guilty. | Discussion focused on what happens if the decision is not unanimous. |
| verdict | The jury’s decision is called a verdict. | Many students knew the word either from personal experience or from TV. |
| deliberate | Before they decide, the jurors have to deliberate. This means they have to think about what they heard in the court room and discuss the evidence. | Discussion focused on students’ understanding of the adverb deliberately and their not knowing the verb form. |
| grave | The judge tells the jurors this will be a grave, very serious decision. | Discussion focused on multiple meanings of words. |
| foreman | The juror who reports to the judge and who is in charge of counting the votes is called the foreman. | Discussion focused on how one gets to be the foreman. |
| double jeopardy | One juror explains to the others that this means if a person is found innocent, that person cannot be tried again for the same crime unless there is new evidence. | Discussion focused on how a murderer could go free. |
| monopoly | One juror tells the others that there is no group monopoly on dishonesty. He means that one cannot say that a whole group of people is automatically this way. Monopoly would mean that one, or one group, shows a characteristic. | Discussion focused on jocks. |
From “Using High-Interest Materials to Engage Secondary Students in Reading” by Rita Mulholland.
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted October 2002