Safe vs Unsafe

About this resource

Is walking feet in the hall safe or unsafe? What about tipping a chair back, or sliding down head first? This is a short picture story a student can turn like a book, and 16 picture cards to sort onto a SAFE mat and an UNSAFE mat, all about ordinary classroom and playground situations. It comes with the log that writes down what happened, so the sorting does not stay a one-time lesson.

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 34 pages

• An 8-page picture story, "Safe at School": one big picture and one short sentence on each page, a "My name" line and one instruction at the top of every page
• The whole story on one black-and-white page, for the photocopier
• A SAFE / UNSAFE sort mat
• 16 sort cards in full color (8 safe, 8 unsafe), cut apart 4 across and 2 down so each cut is one straight line: walking feet, chair legs, points down, feet first, wait turn, on the hook, pick up, open field, and their unsafe pairs. Each has a picture, a word and a short line
• The same 16 sort cards in black-and-white ink-saver
• 8 blank cards: the student draws a picture and writes the words on type-in lines
• Circle One: 8 new situations, each with a picture and a SAFE and an UNSAFE to circle
• My Safe Choices: the student draws a safe choice in the hall, at the desk and on the playground
• I Made Safe Choices: a page of 10 stars to color, one each time the student makes a safe choice
• A how-to page with the answer key for the cards and the circle-one page
• A Safe Choices Log (20 rows: date, what I saw in your words, where, safe choice Y or N, initials)
• A weekly roll-up (8 weeks) with a percent graph
• A filled example: an invented student, one week on the log, three weeks on the roll-up and where each was seen
• A family page with six small cards to cut apart and a note home
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional or another classroom uses the same cards the same way, with a blank line for your school's own rule
• A phrase bank: 23 lines in 6 groups (spoken lines for the story and the cards, written starters for the log, the roll-up and the note home)
• A storage and binder label sheet: 12 labels and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page, and a "what's next" back page

The Sort Cards

Sixteen pictured cards, eight safe and eight unsafe, about the hall, the desk and the playground only. A safe card and its unsafe pair can share a picture, so an adult reads each card aloud and the student decides which mat it goes on. Use a blank card for any situation that is not printed here.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the name lines, the log, the roll-up, the family page, the hand-off page and the blank cards, or print and use a pen. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

Who This Is For

Special education and general education teachers (grades K-3) and paraprofessionals who want a concrete picture-and-sort activity on classroom and playground safety, case managers who need it to show up as data, and the families who get the home page.

More In The Collection

This set is in the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Hallway Expectations Sort Cards, Kitchen Safety Visual Cards, Stop-Think-Act Impulse Control Picture Cards and Log and Social Stories: Classroom Expectations. Free to try first: Visual Supports Starter Set FREE.

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