Help your students practice clear, concise, and organized writing by creating police reports. This real-world writing prompt helps keep students engaged and gives a specific focus to their writing. I often use this technique to have students summarize a character’s death or an important scene in a novel.

Start with a Terrible Example

I begin by showing my students what a poorly written report looks like. I used the In Public Safety website to help me understand how a police report should be written. This is where I found my favorite  poorly-written report: “Nailed, jailed, and bailed.” While I appreciate the clever use of parallel structure and brevity, it’s clearly lacking in detailed information.

I ask the students what crime was committed and by whom. They obviously can’t answer either and so we get to the basics of what must be included in the report: who, what, where, when, how, and why.

Provide a Visual Via a Movie Clip

I then get into another poorly written example. This time I include a little more information, but I write with mostly pronouns and vague details. I ask them to read the report and try to imagine the scene in their minds. Students get a few minutes to silently read and imagine before we discuss. A good think-pair-share session usually does the trick here.

Then I show them the movie clip the report is based on: the cell-phone robbery in Clueless. It is absolutely perfect in its brevity, simplicity, and clean language. Well, almost clean language. Start the clip at 8 seconds in and you’re good to go. Now students can truly get a feel for how much information is missing from the original poorly-written police report.

Practice Editing the Report

I again have students think-pair-share. This time they discuss what specific details they saw in the clip that are missing from the example. After a quick discussion, I have them rewrite the report reminding them to keep it clear, concise, and well-organized. Specifically, when writing police reports, organization should be linear. All events should be relayed in chronological order.

You will likely need to replay the clip for them several times. When you ask them to describe the robber you will get a myriad of answers that are mostly incorrect. This is a great teaching moment as well about how our memory often fails us and why eye-witness accounts are not always as accurate as we think they’d be.

Need More Practice?

If your students need additional practice, or if they just enjoyed the activity, here’s another video clip that also works well. It’s from the opening of Now You See Me when each main character performs their magic trick for the public. The character in this clip, Jack, does a magic trick with a spoon on a tourist boat. He offers $100 to any person who can solve the trick. One of the passengers does and demands his reward money. Jack takes out a wallet (which turns out to be the man’s wallet) and gives him $100 before making a speedy exit with the man’s wallet and watch.

The students really enjoy the clip and they will likely ask for you to replay it again and again so they can get all the details down.

What Will This Lesson Accomplish?

1. Students practice writing with specific detail and in chronological order. You can also focus on writing using a formal, unbiased tone.
2. Students practice discussion skills (speaking and listening during think-pair-share sessions).
3. It’s sets you up to use police reports in future lessons. It’s a fantastic alternative to merely summarizing a text.

Still Have Some Time?

I did this lesson during a 52 minute period and one of my classes still had about 10 minutes left at the end of the lesson. They were still buzzing about the magic tricks so I showed them Apollo Robbin’s Ted Talk: The art of misdirection. He’s a master pick-pocket (like Jack from the movie clip) and the students always enjoy the talk.

Links to Materials

You already have the links to the movie clips in the blog above, but I’m listing them out here as well so now they’re all in one place. I’m also including a link to create a copy of the worksheets and presentations I used in my class. Finally, there is a PDF of my sample police reports.

Video Clips: Clueless, Now You See Me

GoogleSlides PDF: Real-World Writing Presentation-2

Student Worksheet: Police Report

Sample Reports: Police Report Video Clips

Disclaimer: Keep in mind, this is only an introduction and is not actually going to create certified police officers of your students.

SaveSave

Sharing on Facebook!

Pin it!