Personal Safety Lesson Plan

Ages: 10 to 13

Goal: To encourage students to think critically about why abandoned properties and buildings in their community are dangerous to enter.

Skills: Writing, critical thinking, coping with peer pressure

Time: 35 minutes

Activity 1:

Play PSA.
Working individually, ask students to write down as many reasons they can think of why abandoned properties and buildings are dangerous. Give them no more than 3 minutes to complete this task.
Have students share their ideas and record them on the board for the whole class to see. Provide prompts as necessary until the 5 main reasons are touched upon. Particularly highlight safety reasons.

Activity 2:

Have students get into groups of 3 to 5.
Share this scenario with students: Like the kids in the video, you’re walking past an abandoned building with a friend who wants to go inside. You don’t want to not seem cool, but you also know this is a bad idea.
Ask the groups to each write a brief script of how they would say no.
Have groups volunteer to act out their scripts. After each role play ask the class if they think that way of saying no would work, and if not, what they might do differently.

Additional lesson ideas:

Ask students about the social and economic factors that cause buildings to end up abandoned
Using local maps, ask students if they can locate where abandoned buildings are in their community
Provide pictures of abandoned buildings (both the inside and outside). Ask students to identify the dangers including broken glass, pests, missing floorboards, and industrial waste.

For more information on this topic, visit our Parents page.

Page last reviewed: March 23, 2016