Eyewitness Testimony (Engaging Lesson and Activity on Memory)
Psychology lesson on memory in which students act as eyewitnesses to a staged laptop theft, then learn from research why eyewitness accounts are so often wrong.

- Grades
- Grades 7–12, Middle School, High School
- Pages
- 30
- File type
- Zip
- Subject
- Social Studies, History, Psychology
- Topic
- eyewitness, memory
- Resource types
- Lesson Plans, Teacher Tools
About this resource
What's inside this resource
Engaging Eyewitness Testimony Lesson on Memory\nThis 30-page product is designed to facilitate student learning about human memory and why it can be unreliable. Students take on the role of a witness to a stolen laptop and describe what they saw. In the process, they realize how fallible memory can be and why eyewitness accounts should not be fully trusted. The materials cover the basics of memory, including the three types of memory (sensory, short-term, long-term). An engaging activity puts students in the shoes of an eyewitness. Reflection questions, statistics, summarized research, videos, and visual slides are also included. Educators can use this versatile product for whole-class instruction or small groups to teach key psychology concepts related to memory in an engaging way.
In the classroom
Teaching tips & learning objectives
Learning objectives
- Describe the three types of memory and the encoding-storage-retrieval process
- Explain how schemas and suggestion can distort eyewitness memory
- Evaluate the accuracy of their own eyewitness account
Teaching tips
- Test the staged-crime video in the slides before class, since the eyewitness activity depends on it
Skills covered
- Recall under questioning — describing the suspect's clothing, height, age and weapon from memory
- Data comparison — checking answers against the real answers and class statistics
- Reflection — writing about how well they performed as a witness
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Resource details
Concepts & topics
Core concepts
- Sensory memory
- Short-term memory
- Long-term memory
- Eyewitness testimony
- Memory distortion
Topics
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