Fire Drill Social Story

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 29 pages

• 3 short social stories about an ordinary fire drill: When the Fire Alarm Sounds; Walking Outside for a Fire Drill; Going Back Inside After a Fire Drill — 6 plain, present-tense sentences each (18 in all), with a picture beside every sentence and a type-in name line
• Every story twice: a full-color set and a black-and-white ink-saver set for the photocopier
• Pocket story strips: each story's 6 pictures as numbered cut-apart cards (18 cards per set, in color and in ink-saver), for a pocket, a keyring or a desk, plus a "four quick ways to use a strip" card and a printing/cutting tip card
• A write-your-own story page: 6 numbered panels, each with a draw-or-glue picture box and two type-in sentence lines
• 3 practice pages, one per story: three "what can I do?" moments from that story with a type-in answer and a Y/N box, a Monday-to-Friday "I read the story / I did what the story says" strip, six put-the-story-in-order slots for the strip cards, three things to try with an adult, and lines for the student's own words
• A how-to page: before the first read, reading a story the same way every time, which story first and the schedule-card board, the practice pages, what counts on the log, the strips and the blank page, what the stories are and are not, sending home and handing off
• A Story and Moments Log (16 rows: date, story read, read by, moments seen, used it, initials)
• A weekly roll-up (8 weeks: story, days read, moments seen, used it, percent, notes) with a percent-of-moments graph
• A filled example — an invented student, one week on the log and three weeks on the roll-up, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family page naming the story of the week, with the three stories' pictures, a read-at-home table and lines for what happened at home
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional, a coach or another classroom reads the same story the same way, with a blank line for the building's own fire safety plan detail if it has one
• A phrase bank for writing a new story: 24 starters in 6 groups (opening lines, what I can do, why it helps me, closing lines, writing the log and roll-up, the family page and hand-off) plus a 4-point check before a new story is printed
• A storage and binder label sheet: 11 labels (one per story, with its pictures, plus 8 plain section labels) and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A concrete picture story about an ordinary routine every student practices: hearing the alarm, lining up, walking outside and waiting, then going back inside. Most fire-drill resources stop at a set of step cards for the board; this one reads like a short book instead, with a practice page for each story, a log that counts the moments the story is about, a weekly roll-up and a phrase bank for writing the next one, so "the student did what the story says" turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Stories

• When the Fire Alarm Sounds — school, alarm, listen, line, door, thumbsup
• Walking Outside for a Fire Drill — school, walk, teacher, wait, listen, thumbsup
• Going Back Inside After a Fire Drill — school, teacher, line, door, walk, thumbsup

Six sentences each, one thing per sentence, in the first person and the present tense: the moment (the alarm sounds, the class waits outside, the class returns), and one concrete thing the student does. The same picture means the same word in every story, and 9 pictures cover all 18 sentences. Every picture is a concrete object or action a young child can name in one word — a rotating alarm light, a line of students, a door, a clock face for waiting — never a prediction about how any individual student will feel; every sentence says what CAN happen or what the calm response can help with, never what a student WILL feel when the alarm sounds.

A Different Format From Our Fire Drill Routine Visual Schedule Cards

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the story name lines, the practice pages, the blank story, the log, the roll-up, the family page and the hand-off page, or print and use a pen. The story and strip pages print on cardstock or plain paper; strips cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

It tells a student, in pictures, what an ordinary fire drill looks like and what they can do, and counts what happened. It is not a fire safety or evacuation procedure, a behavior plan, or any other legal or clinical procedure, and it promises no outcome. It carries no prompt hierarchy, fading schedule or mastery rule; which story a student reads first, for how many days, and when the next one starts are your team's decisions. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. The log counts two things: whether the story was read, and in how many of the day's moments the student did what it says.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers, paraprofessionals and general education teachers who read a short story with a student before or after a fire drill, case managers who need that reading to show up as data, and the families who get the home page sent home.

More In The Collection

Part of the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Fire Drill Routine Visual Schedule Cards, Social Story It's OK to Make a Mistake, Social Stories When Someone Is Unkind and Social Story Asking for Help; more picture sets are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same pictures-plus-data shape.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.