Make narrative writing authentic and exciting!!!

1. Assign a few students to be the criminals. Assign a few students to be the police officers and send them out of the room. Everyone else should not know what is going on. Soon they will be witnesses to some "crimes."
2. Teach a normal writing or grammar lesson. While you are teaching the criminals will do their assigned crimes (draw on the board, take things off of the teacher's desk..etc.)
3. The rest of the class will be confused. Tell them that they are actually doing a fun writing activity. You need them to be like witnesses in real life. They need to write a detailed description of the crime that just took place. Tell them that the police officer students are going to read the reports and try to write a police report summary. The criminals need to write a statement as well
4. Tell students that writing essays is important in real life. Police officers do several a day and they need to be very detailed.
5. Make sure you video tape the entire lesson. When all of the reports are done, play the video and ask them if they added all the details in the video. What were they wearing? What time was it? What was the teacher saying as the crimes were happening.