Sociology - Crime and Deviance Lecture, Research Activity, and Guided Notes

This lecture and research activity focuses on crime and deviance, a topic that will be engaging for many students. Students should be familiar with the concepts of law, social norms, and social construction of reality. The instructor should begin with the opening "Do Now" activity, allowing students to think about how they would define law, crime, norms, and deviance. Students are not expected to know deviance as a sociological term, but may know it in other contexts.

Students should then review social construction; I recommend having students read most of the slides and eliciting more examples from them (e.g. it's a norm to raise your hand in class). Students should take notes (see the bundle for the notes packet!) and then come up with examples of crime and deviance to see where they overlap in the Venn diagram (e.g. jaywalking is a crime but not really considered deviant, nose picking is deviant but not a crime, and murder is both). This can be very fun for students and an opportunity to connect their daily lives with academic material.

Finally, students will engage in a "research jigsaw" on the different theories of deviance and crime within sociology. Using laptops in the classroom (or at home for homework), students should be split into 4 groups and take notes on the basics of each theoretical framework. Then they should come up with their own examples. It is highly recommended for the instructor to familiarize themselves with each theory and have examples available to students that are easy to understand and culturally relevant.

Students can then perform informal presentations of their findings or verbally explain them to their peers. Once they all have the notes, the instructor should review each theory to add to understanding and clear up any misconceptions/confusion. The final slide of "major takeaways" (the "so what?" of this lesson) is largely my own personal opinions and can be modified or skipped. Students can then begin the exit ticket, making an argument for one of the theories they studied.