lesson focus

  • Respect
  • Responsibility

expectations and goals

  • Students to understand the link between the Police and Crime Stoppers in Western Australia
  • Students are able to investigate, collect and interpret crime statistics data

learning experiences

Classroom Ideas

  1. Ask students to write down on a small piece of paper why reporting a crime is the right thing to do. Divide the class into two teams and have them face each other. Invite the students to scrunch up their paper and toss it at the opposing team for a specific time limit. The team with the most pieces of paper on their ‘side’ loses. Redistribute all pieces and call for volunteers to read out what someone else wrote. Ask them to say if they agree or disagree with the statement and why.
  2. Display the statement to the class, “The police are the public and the public are the police!” Ask the students what this might mean and discuss the role of a police officer in society.
  3. Ask the class to discuss how the police are connected to Crime Stoppers in WA.
  4. Organise the students into pairs and ask them to brainstorm as many types of crimes as possible.Discuss as a class.
  5. Ask the students, “When you look at the role of Crime Stoppers, which of these crimes would you encourage the public to talk to them about?” Make the right call about who to call and when.
  6. Ask students to recall the main laws from the previous lesson, ‘Laws, who needs them!’ Pose questions to the class such as:
    1. What is a law?
    2. What is the difference between a criminal crime and a civil crime?
    3. What is an example of each?
    4. Ask students to categorise the crimes that were brainstormed into the correct categories of ‘criminal’ and ‘civic’.
  7. Ask students to view the crime statistics on the WA Police website
  8. Ask students to click on ‘Crime offence descriptions’ and look for any of the crimes that have not been listed on their brainstorm and add them to their list.
  9. Provide students with access to Criminal offences (Resource 19 below). Ask students to use the WA Police website above to complete the questions.
  10. Instruct students to also complete a search of crime statistics for different areas in the metropolitan and regional areas of Western Australia.
  11. Provide students with access to Crime statistics graphs (Resource 20  below) and ask them to complete.
  12. Ask students to prepare a graph for display based on a select number of crime statistics and graph the rise and fall of the category over the period displayed in the statistics.
  13. Invite students to attempt to explain the rise and fall in the statistics (seasonal crime such as Christmas) and the effect that this would have on the individual and community.
  14. Hold a class discussion about crimes in the news. Ask students to discuss the types of crimes that are prevalent in the media.
  15. Organise the students into pairs. Ask each pair to select an article that has been in the media about a crime and complete Media article analysis (Resource 21 below).
  16. Use the Storyboard template (Resource 22 below) to create a storyboard to illustrate what happens when a law is broken.
    Students are to use the storyboard to:

    1. record what happened
    2. explain which law was broken
    3. suggest strategies to avoid this situation in the future

focus questions

  1. “The police are the public and the public are the police!” What does this mean?
  2. What does a police officer do?
  3. How are the police connected to Crime Stoppers?
  4. When should you not call Crime Stoppers?
  5. When you look at Crime Stoppers, which crimes would you encourage the public to talk to them about?
  6. What are the types of crimes that are prevalent in the media

Assessment tasks

Students to:

  1. Use the Storyboard template (Resource 22 below) to create a storyboard to illustrate what happens when a law is broken.

download resources and tools

Printable lesson plan [Download Year 8, Lesson 8 plan)

WA Police website

Resource 19: Criminal offences [Download Resource 19]

Resource 20: Crime statistics graphs [Download Resource 20]

Resource 21: Media article analysis  [Download Resource 21]

Resource 22: Storyboard template [Download Resource 22]