It’s never too early to start learning road safety.

As primary-aged children begin to learn about their role in society, it’s the perfect time to teach them road safety rules. Help them recognize and understand the dangers of the road, how to stay safe as passengers in cars and school buses, and as pedestrians and cyclists-in-training.

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Lesson Plans for K to Grade 3

In these lessons, students will learn the definition of safety rules and safe practices through guided discussions that focus on pedestrian and road safety. There are interactive, in-class activities as well as opportunities to teach outdoors. The lesson plans also include sample achievement charts and rubrics to easily evaluate their learning.

Working independently as part of a small group, students will engage in learning experiences designed to meet a number of health and physical education, and language expectations found in the primary Ontario curriculum documents.

Bingo Your Way to Safety

Students learn to identify common traffic signs found in their community, through a fun craft and interactive, on-their-feet bingo game.

Walking Your Way to Safety

Map out a 20-minute walking tour of the neighbourhood and put pedestrian safety rules in context. Discuss street signs and how to safely cross the road.

Passenger Performance

Turn your classroom into a school bus for this role-playing activity that teaches students passenger safety rules and good bus behaviour.

Safety on Two Wheels

Cyclists will learn bike safety rules and the importance of proper protective gear with an impactful cauliflower drop demonstration.

Teaching and learning strategies

  • Allow students to combine health expectations with the arts (drama, role-play) and language in the Ontario curriculum to create authentic learning opportunities.
  • Engage students in a range of cooperative and collaborative learning strategies addressing 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

Language

  • Read stories related to the topics of pedestrian safety during the comprehensive literacy program. Consider using these stories during modeled and shared reading.
  • Create a pamphlet, poster or another type of non-fiction writing to communicate about road safety.

Mathematics

  • Create a bar or pictograph showing which months of the year it would be safe to participate in cycling, rollerblading and skateboarding.

Music

  • Create poems/songs with body accompaniment (e.g., snapping fingers, clapping) around the topic of pedestrian safety.

Visual Arts

  • Produce two- and three-dimensional works of art that communicate ideas for specific purposes and to familiar audiences.
  • Colour a road sign or signal with the appropriate colours and write the rule on the back of the sign. Signs and signals are then made into mobiles using coat hangers and string and displayed in the classroom.
  • Create a poster of one of the bus or car safety rules they must follow as a passenger.

Technology

  • Play interactive computer games to explore bus safety rules.

Social Studies

  • Plot out their walk/ride to school. Have students plot their routes on a map.

Daily Physical Activity/Physical Education

  • Run fitness activity stations using road signs as the stations where students will perform a certain exercise.

Find School Activities for your students’ Grade level and engage your school in road safety-related initiatives.

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

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