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Increased freedom on the road means increasing risk awareness.

Junior-aged students are at an age when they’re actively exploring their communities – supervised and not – by walking, cycling, skating and scootering. Make their adventures safer by equipping them with decision-making and risk-identification skills for when they encounter new situations.

Lesson Plans for Grades 4 to 6

In these lessons, students are led through scenarios that provoke decision-making around cycling, inline skating and skateboarding. They will learn to identify road risks as well as explore strategies to minimize them. They’ll also learn about being a safe passenger and pedestrian.

Working independently, or as part of a small group, these learning experiences are designed to meet a number of expectations found in the Ontario curriculum documents, including health and physical education, as well as language.

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Bike, Blade and Board Safety

In this exercise, students get on their feet and create original skits based on scenarios designed to encourage safe decision-making while cycling or skating.
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Vehicle Safety

Small groups contribute to a gallery of safety posters addressing rules and safety suggestions for cycling, riding an ATV, in-line skating, skateboarding, walking and snowmobiling.
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Pedestrian Safety

Junior-aged students lead buddies from Primary grades on a walk around the neighbourhood, giving them the opportunity to share their expertise on road safety.

Teaching and learning strategies

  • Allow students to combine health expectations with the arts (drama, role-play) and language, using Ontario curriculum to create authentic learning opportunities.
  • Engage students in a range of cooperative and collaborative learning strategies that address differentiated instruction and multiple intelligences (kinesthetic learner).
  • Engage students in higher-order thinking through open-ended questions that prompt learners to explore various ways of thinking, such as describing, analyzing, integrating, comparing and explaining.
  • Coach and provide descriptive feedback to small groups of students or independent students during guided and independent activities.
  • Provide formative assessment practices which will allow teachers to coach students and provide descriptive feedback to small groups of students or independent students during guided and independent activities.

Cross-curricular linkages

  • Write and perform a short play that emphasizes the impact of poor decision-making about vehicle safety.
  • Create short commercials about vehicle safety.
  • Play charades to act out the effects of bad decisions about vehicle safety.
  • Host a game show format event (for example, Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire) that focuses on the rules and responsibilities of pedestrian safety.
  • Write newspaper articles and illustrate pictures or take photographs about pedestrian safety.
  • Create a talk show-style drama in which students who have been involved in a crash are interviewed.

  • Create poems and songs with accompaniment about bike, skateboard, and rollerblade safety.

  • Use the grid and coordinates on a map to recreate a crash scene. Or, describe the actions that should be taken in different scenarios to prevent a crash.
  • Collect data on the number of students in the school who wear helmets when riding a bike, rollerblading or skateboarding, then graph the results and draw conclusions.

  • Create two- or three-dimensional works of art which convey messages about bike, skateboard, and rollerblade safety.

  • Research the use of bicycles and bike routes in Ontario. Examine the regions where the use of bicycles is significantly higher. Have students plot these areas on a map of Ontario.
  • Research the developments of transportation over time. Ask students how developments have either reduced or increased the number of road safety injuries.

  • Create fitness activity stations marked by road signs and have students perform an exercise at each station.
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Find School Activities for your students’ Grade level and engage your school in road safety-related initiatives.

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See the Community Engagement Kit for more ideas, tools and tips to bring together the community for a road safety event.

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See Adaptation Tips for a list of tips and aspects to consider when adapting these activities to fit your class needs.