Seeking justice

Joe | Feb 27, 2026Feb 26, 2026

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• talk about crimes, punishment and the justice system;
• practise crime and punishment vocabulary;
• tell crime stories and share perspectives.

In this lesson, students discuss crime and justice, explore words for people in court cases (e.g. suspect, defendant, witness) and read strange crime incidents. They share their opinions on punishments in different cases, work with verbs for legal actions (e.g. commit, question, accuse) and tell crime stories. Students also study word stress. 

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

This lesson focuses on crime and punishment vocabulary and starts with a warm-up. Students look at pictures related to crime and tell a story about what happened. After that, they match the halves of sentences involving roles in a trial (e.g. jury, prosecution, defence). Then, students read real crime stories and complete gaps with the correct form of the words from the previous task. Following that, they say whether they agree or disagree with the punishments given in each case. Students justify their opinion. They then read sentences involving stages of a criminal case and match verbs (e.g. charge, investigate, sentence) with their definitions. Afterwards, students put the sentences in the correct order to create a story. 

VOCABULARY PRACTICE AND DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students continue practising crime and punishment vocabulary. They say the target words from the lesson (e.g. arrest, commit, defendant) and put them into their correct word stress category (stress the first syllable and stress the second syllable). Moving on, students complete sentences about views on crime and punishment by choosing the correct verbs (e.g. people who charge/commit crimes out of poverty should…). They then finish the sentences with their own ideas and add details. Finally, students choose two or three crime-related topics (e.g. a crime you have seen in the news recently, a crime book that you’ve read) and talk about them using as many target words from the lesson as possible.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students read sentences related to crimes and complete gaps with crime and punishment vocabulary. They then say what happened next, using the words from the lesson. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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