Add a little fun to your current literature study by turning your students into police officers. This official-looking offense/incident report requires students to collect details from their reading and use real-world writing skills to efficiently report the facts (just the facts, ma’am) of the scene you just read.
Students love that I’m not asking them to analyze anything here. This is just straight fact-collection and reporting, but the task still requires a significant understanding of the details of the passage they’re studying. Part of the police report assignment also includes a crime/incident-scene artistic sketch, which students of all ages (yes, even my high school seniors) really love. Keep some colored pencils nearby because students always ask for them.
Depending on the piece of literature, I sometimes allow students to fabricate a witness who isn’t mentioned in the text, like a nosy neighbor peeking through a window. Most literature, though, works fine with just the people in the scene as it was written.
This 2-page file (downloads as both a PDF and Google Drive version – both uneditable) includes a blank form and a completed sample to show students, if you wish. The sample is from my students’ study of Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, but you could use this worksheet with ANY book or short story that has a crime/incident scene that would warrant police attention.
Want an eyewitness account of Miss Maudie Atkinson’s house fire in To Kill a Mockingbird? This would work.
Want someone to report the creepy action of an Edgar Allan Poe story to police? Oh yeah, the authorities will need this form.
Want to catalog the atrocities committed in Denmark’s royal palace? The witnesses in Shakespeare’s Hamlet will certainly keep your police officers busy.
Hope you enjoy this activity, which works with sixth graders through high school seniors.
Please note: This item is included in my “Lamb to the Slaughter” materials, four-week Short Story Unit Plan, To Kill a Mockingbird novel unit bundle, and the Literature Supplemental Activity 10-pack. To avoid a double-purchase, please do not buy the item on this page if you also intend to buy any of those other items.
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