ESL Lesson Plan - Passive Voice - Crime Scene

Here's a lesson for solid intermediates and up with a language focus on the passive voice and crime lexis. At the end of the lesson, students take the roles of police officers and have to give a press briefing to the media about a crime scene that they witnessed. Ideally, you will need an empty room to set up a crime scene for the activation and a language school that is ok with you trashing things around a bit. There are other ways to get around this, if this is not possible.

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Introduction: just a couple of min.
Do any of the following.
1. Show a clip from a movie that shows a police officer giving a press briefing to the media
2. Come in and immediately address the class as if they are police officers
3. Have a picture of a police chalk outline and ask students what it is
4. Pass out different clippings of recent crimes in the paper
Any of these will work. The goal is to try and elicit the concept of crime and police.

Tip: Since this lesson ends with students giving a press briefing, it's a good idea to show a video of one somewhere in the lesson as a demonstration.

Lead in: around 7 min.
Demo these questions out and have students in pairs/groups answer them.
1. Do you think your city/country is safe?
2. What 5 crimes are commonly committed in your city?
3. Are criminals usually caught in your city or do they get away?
4. Name 3 famous crimes of the last 5 years and mention some details about them.

Target Language (around 10 minutes)
Tip: In this lesson you're teaching both language and grammar. To make the most of this, teach the lexis first and have these new words populated in your grammar studies. This allows you to study both the grammar and lexis together.

Elicit and CCQ these words
1. a crime scene
2. a witness
3. a suspect
4. to break in
5. to strangle
6. to knock over
7. a press briefing
8. to arrest
9. a victim
10. a perpetrator

Tip: These words are not set in stone, and you can adjust any of them to the needs of your activation.

Grammar Presentation
Write on the board "Someone knocked over the plant." Now, ask the students if there is another way that they can write this. They might need some help, so write "The plant... ....  ...." and have them fill in the rest. They should be able to do this without too much difficulty
Tip: Notice how in even the grammar presentation I'm using the target lexis.

Now, just elicit out all of the rules by asking a series of different questions.
What is this?
Why do we use this?
How is it different from the active voice?
How do we form it?

Tip: Don't explain the grammar to them! Give examples and elicit the rules and structure out. Too often teachers feel the need to lecture the grammar to students. Don't do that. You'll get far better results if you get students to tell you the function and structure of the grammar.

Do a few more of these with the students switching an active sentence into a passive sentence. Work on different tenses. When you feel they have the basics down, move to your first study.

Study 1: Active/passive switching (around 7 minutes)

Pass out a pre-made sheet that has crime related sentences in both the passive and active voice. For example, "Someone committed a crime yesterday." "A wallet was left in the hallway." Students, in pairs or groups, have to first identify if the sentence is in the passive or active. Then, students rewrite the sentence into the other voice.

Study 2: Crime scene pictures (around 7 minutes)
Show a picture on a flip chart of a crime scene that you have created. You can have things in the picture like a broken vase, an open door, a cigarette, a glass, a body on the floor, a broken window...etc. Ask the glass to create a sentence using the information in the photo. For example, students could say "a window was broken", or "a door was left open"...etc.
Hand out a copy of the drawing, and have students in groups give as many details as possible about the picture using the passive voice.

Tip: You might want to have a few different pictures of made of crime scenes and groups of students have to ask questions about the different pictures to compare and contrast what they see.


Activation: The Crime Scene (about 20 minutes total)
Set up: If you have access to an empty room, set up a fake crime scene before the class that students are unaware of.
Tip: What I do is a create a variety of different clues in the room for the students to search for. Create a tape outline of a victim with evidence of what happened to them. This can be anything, but make sure to have enough stuff there so that students can take down a lot of notes. If you can't get the props to do it, put a few sticky notes about the crime in the room. Something like this: "someone heard screaming in the hallway", "there's a TV currently on", "dirty footprints from a large shoe"...etc. The more you have, the better.

Now tell half of the class that they are police officers and half of the class that they are the media. Tell them that there has been a murder last night and that the media has to formulate 5 questions about the crime to ask the police. Break the media students into two groups and tell them that they are competing news companies.
   While they are working on that, escort the police officers to the crime scene room.
Now separate the police officers into two teams. Tell them that each team has to record as much detail about the crime scene as possible the passive voice. Monitor the students and help them see the clues that you have created if they need help. Give them about 4 minutes or so to record as many details as they can.
Tip: Remember to break up both the media and police into teams. This will create more output when they finally do their press briefing.
Tip: In this example, there was a murder. If you feel this is too gruesome or dark, have the crime be something different.

Activation: Press Briefing
When both of the police groups have enough data recorded, tell them to stop and wait outside of the main classroom. Quickly check the media group's questions to make sure that they have enough questions to ask. If you feel they do, then move forward.
Tell the media groups that there has been a murder and that each group will work with a different police unit. Pair off the police groups and media groups and then monitor the activity. The media group and police group that ask and answer the most correct questions wins.

Tip: Try to avoid having the students just read off the questions. You want this presentation to sound as natural as possible. Have the media groups introduce themselves to the officers, and follow up any information with more questions. You should be monitoring both groups and push them to ask and answer questions in the passive. The lexis you present in the beginning of the lesson should be used in the activation. Try and think of your crime scene and add the lexis you need accordingly.

Feedback: about 4 minutes

Once they are finished, get feedback from the different groups. Which police unit did the best? Which media group asked the most questions? Board any mistakes you heard, and correct them with the class. End the lesson with a joke. 

General Thoughts: This is a fun lesson to do if you have access to another room to set up the crime scene. You can use a photo if it's impossible, but creating the actual crime scene makes the lesson much more engaging and memorable. Overall, this lesson has a great set up and really uses the passive voice in a realistic and correct way. The biggest pitfalls that can happen with the lesson are that there is not enough clues or information for students to take notes with, or that the media group may not ask enough questions. If either of these happen, you won't get a lot of output in your activation. Monitor the setup for both groups and you won't have this problem.

 Cheers,

 Chris

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