A five year old boy pulled out a chair just as his aunt moved to sit down. She fell to the floor and broke her hip; incurring $11,000 in medical bills. The aunt sued her 5 year old nephew for battery. This story is a real-life legal case and is one that thinkLaw uses with students across the country.  

Students begin by determining the answer to the question, “Should the boy be held liable for battery?” The discussion extends further with probing questions like, “What would the world be like if people could just go around suing 5 year olds?”  And conversely, “What would the world be like if children couldn’t be held accountable for seriously injuring adults?” All too often, the students who struggle most with these types of questions are our gifted and talented students.  G/T students can be obsessed with finding the “right” answer and struggle with questions that don’t have a specific answer.

The Grande Innovation Academy, a K-8 charter school in Casa Grande, Arizona, recognized this challenge for their g/t students and connected with thinkLaw to help challenge their gifted/talented students to expand their critical thinking skills.

thinkLaw Founder and CEO Colin Seale said, “The gifted and talented population is a group that is frequently under-served in American education.  Everyone assumes that they are the “smart” kids that they’ll be fine without a lot of extra support. But the truth is that the g/t population faces a lot of unique challenges.  It’s not that a g/t student needs less support but rather they need different support. Using real-life legal cases with g/t students is very effective. Cases aren’t black and white.  As you start to analyze the facts that are presented, more questions are raised.”

Amy Casey, lead gifted teacher at The Grande Innovation Academy, agrees saying, “Introducing students to situations where answers are not black and white stretches them to deeper levels of thinking.”

For more information about The Grande Innovation Academy check out their webpage


To order a critical thinking assessment for your students or to learn how your school or organization can adopt thinkLaw’s standards-aligned program that helps educators teach critical thinking to all students, please click here to schedule a time to speak with someone on the thinkLaw team or call us now at (702) 318-7512. Join us on our next webinar: Thinking Like a Lawyer: Powerful Strategies to Teach Critical Thinking to All Students

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