Safety And Trusted Adults

Summary

Students explore how shared messages, images, and personal information can affect themselves and others, how to evaluate behaviors that prevent injuries, and how practicing safety procedures prepares everyone for real emergencies. The chapter also introduces the idea of a trusted adult who can help in difficult or unsafe situations.

Concepts Covered

1. Sharing Messages And Images
2. Risks Of Sharing Personal Information
3. Injury Prevention
4. Evaluating Safety Behaviors
5. Safety Procedures
6. Practicing Safety Procedures
7. Trusted Adult

Prerequisites

This chapter builds on the foundational ideas about health introduced in Chapter 1: Foundations Of Health.

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Let's Talk About Staying Safe

Hi again, friend! This chapter is about staying safe — online, at home, at school, and everywhere in between. We'll also meet a very important idea: the trusted adult. Let's think it through together. Healthy choices, happy you!

Sharing Messages, Images, and Videos

Every day, people send messages, photos, and videos to friends and family using phones, tablets, and computers. Sharing can be a fun and kind way to stay connected — a photo of a birthday cake, a funny video, a quick "good luck on your test!" message. But once something is shared, it does not always stay private, and it can be hard to control where it goes next.

Sharing messages and images means sending words, pictures, or videos to another person or a group, usually through a phone, app, or website. Before sharing anything, it helps to pause and think about who might see it and how it could make someone feel — including the person in the picture, the person receiving it, and even people who were never supposed to see it at all.

A shared message or image can affect people in several ways:

• It can make someone feel happy, proud, or included.
• It can embarrass or hurt someone if it is shared without asking, or shared with people it was never meant for.
• It can be copied, forwarded, or saved by someone else — even if the original sender wanted it deleted.
• It can be seen by strangers if privacy settings are not set correctly.

Big Idea

Once you press "send," you cannot control where a message, photo, or video goes next. Pause and think before you share.

A simple habit helps here: before sharing anything, ask "Would I be okay if a trusted adult saw this?" and "Would the person in this picture be okay with me sharing it?" If the answer to either question is no, it is a sign to stop and rethink.

Diagram: Think Before You Share

Think Before You Share MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: think-before-you-share
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain, classify, exemplify

Learning objective: Students explain how sharing a message, image, or video could affect themselves or others by classifying short scenarios as "safe to share," "ask first," or "don't share."

Canvas layout: - Top area (150px): One scenario card at a time (e.g., "You want to share a funny video of your friend tripping," "You want to send a birthday message to your grandma," "You want to post your home address in a game chat so a friend can visit") - Middle area (250px): Three labeled bins — "Safe to Share," "Ask First," "Don't Share" - Bottom strip (100px): Explanation caption and "Next Scenario" button

Visual elements: - 8 scenario cards mixing clearly safe examples (a kind birthday message), ask-first examples (a photo that includes a friend), and don't-share examples (personal information or an embarrassing video) - Bins shown as simple labeled boxes with friendly icons (heart, question mark, stop sign)

Interactive controls: - Click or drag the scenario card into the matching bin - Button: "Next Scenario" - Button: "Reset"

Default parameters: - First scenario: kind birthday message (clear "Safe to Share" example, to build confidence)

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the scenario card with no judgment yet Stage 2: After the student picks a bin, reveal whether the choice matches the recommended answer and a one-sentence reason ("This includes a friend's face, so it's kind to ask them first.") Stage 3: Show a reminder question: "Would the person in it be okay, and would a trusted adult be okay with this?"

Behavior: - Correct placement: bin glows softly, calm chime, reason caption appears - Incorrect placement: gentle prompt, "Look again — think about who could see this and how they'd feel." - After all scenarios, a summary caption reminds students to pause and think before sharing

Instructional Rationale: This is an Understand-level objective (explain, classify), so the pattern uses a classification sorter with a revealed reason rather than a scored quiz. Students need to see concrete scenarios and compare their choice against a clear explanation, which builds the judgment habit needed later for the Evaluate-level safety benchmark in this same chapter.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep scenario text short and readable aloud. Avoid naming specific apps; keep language general so it applies to any device or platform.

Diagram: Before You Send

Before You Send Interactive Poster

Type: infographic poster-id: before-you-send
Library: p5.js
Status: Published

A four-step pause helps students protect privacy, consider impact, and make a thoughtful sharing choice.

Use Explore mode to select a section and learn more. Use Quiz Me mode to practice finding each idea.

The Risks of Sharing Personal Information

Some information is riskier to share than a photo or a joke — it is information that could let a stranger find, contact, or pretend to be someone. This is where students need extra care.

Risks of sharing personal information are the dangers that come from telling or posting private details — like a full name, home address, school name, phone number, password, or daily schedule — where people other than trusted family and friends might see it. A stranger who collects enough personal details can use them to locate a person, trick them, or pretend to be someone they trust.

Here is personal information that should almost never be shared publicly or with people a student does not know well in real life:

1. Full name and last name together
2. Home address or the name of the school a student attends
3. Phone number
4. Passwords, even to a game or an app
5. Daily schedule, like when a student is home alone or walking somewhere

Handle With Care

A password, home address, or daily schedule should stay private — even from someone online who seems friendly. If someone you don't know in real life asks for these details, that is a sign to stop and tell a trusted adult right away.

A helpful way to think about it: personal information is like a house key. A student would not hand their house key to a stranger just because that stranger seemed nice — and the same care applies online. Even people who seem kind in messages might not be who they say they are.

Here is a simple comparison of information that is generally fine to share publicly versus information that needs real care:

Type of Information	Example	Sharing Care Needed
General interest	"I like soccer and drawing."	Usually fine to share
First name only, in a school setting	"My name is Jordan."	Usually fine with people the student knows
Full name plus address or school	"I'm Jordan Smith at Lincoln Elementary."	High risk — needs a trusted adult's permission
Passwords or daily schedule	"My password is..." / "I'm home alone at 4pm."	Never share, even with online friends

Evaluating Safety Behaviors Around Injury Prevention

Safety is not only about screens and sharing — it is also about the everyday physical world: sidewalks, bikes, kitchens, playgrounds, and pools. Getting hurt is often preventable when people notice risks ahead of time and choose safer behaviors.

Injury prevention means the actions people take to reduce the chance of getting hurt, in places like the home, school, playground, road, or water. Many injuries happen not because of bad luck, but because a safer choice was available and was not used — like wearing a helmet, walking instead of running near stairs, or waiting for a crosswalk signal.

Common injury-prevention behaviors that matter across many environments include:

• Wearing a helmet when biking, skating, or scootering
• Walking (not running) near pools, stairs, and hallways
• Using crosswalks and looking both ways before crossing a street
• Keeping chemicals, medicines, and sharp tools out of reach and unused without an adult
• Wearing a seatbelt in a car every time, every ride
• Telling an adult about a spill, broken glass, or other hazard instead of ignoring it

This year, Grade 3 introduces a new and more advanced skill: not just naming safety rules, but evaluating safety behaviors — judging whether a specific action in a specific environment is actually safe enough, and explaining why. This means looking at a real situation, weighing what could go wrong, and deciding if a behavior needs to change.

This One Takes Practice

Judging whether a behavior is "safe enough" is trickier than just remembering a rule — it takes practice comparing situations. That's exactly why this is new this year. You've got this!

Evaluating a safety behavior means asking questions like: What could go wrong here? How likely is it? How bad would the injury be? Is there a safer choice available right now? For example, riding a bike on a quiet sidewalk without a helmet is risky because falls happen unpredictably and head injuries can be serious — even though nothing might go wrong that particular day.

Diagram: Is This Behavior Safe Enough?

Is This Behavior Safe Enough? MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: safety-behavior-rater
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Evaluate (L5) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: judge, assess, justify

Learning objective: Students evaluate personal behaviors to prevent injuries across multiple environments (home, playground, road, water) by rating scenario cards on a safety scale and justifying their rating.

Canvas layout: - Top area (150px): One illustrated scenario card at a time across four environments (home, playground, road, water), e.g., "Riding a bike on the sidewalk without a helmet," "Waiting for the crossing guard's signal before crossing," "Running next to the pool," "Leaving cleaning spray within reach of a younger sibling" - Middle area (250px): A three-point rating scale the student selects: "Safe," "Risky — Needs a Change," "Unsafe — Stop This Now" - Bottom strip (100px): Justification prompt, revealed reasoning, and "Next Scenario" button

Visual elements: - 10 scenario cards spread across the four environments, mixing clearly safe, borderline risky, and clearly unsafe behaviors - Environment icon (house, playground swing, road sign, or wave) shown on each card

Interactive controls: - Click one of three rating buttons: "Safe," "Risky — Needs a Change," "Unsafe — Stop This Now" - After rating, a text box invites a one-sentence reason (optional, can also pick from short reason chips like "could fall," "could hit someone," "hard to see danger coming") - Button: "Next Scenario" - Button: "Reset"

Default parameters: - First scenario: "Waiting for the crossing guard's signal before crossing" (clearly "Safe," to build confidence)

Data Visibility Requirements: Stage 1: Show the scenario card and environment, no judgment yet Stage 2: After the student rates it, reveal the expert rating and a one-sentence justification ("This is risky because falls are unpredictable and a helmet protects the head, which is why it needs a change.") Stage 3: Show a running scoreboard of how many ratings matched the expert view, encouraging re-tries rather than a pass/fail grade

Behavior: - Matching rating: card glows green, encouraging caption appears with the justification - Non-matching rating: calm prompt, "Look again — what could go wrong here, and how serious would it be?", then reveal the reasoning anyway - After all scenarios, a summary caption reminds students that evaluating safety means asking what could go wrong, how likely it is, and whether a safer choice exists

Instructional Rationale: Evaluating personal behaviors to prevent injuries is an explicit Evaluate-level benchmark (3.5.1.2), the first genuine judgment task in this content strand. A rating-scale-plus-justification pattern is used instead of a simple sort, because Evaluate-level thinking requires weighing likelihood and severity and defending a judgment, not just matching an example to a category.

Implementation notes: Use p5.js. Keep illustrations simple and non-graphic — show the safer/unsafer choice, not an injury itself. Cover all four environments named in the benchmark: home, playground, road, and water.

Notice how evaluating safety behaviors builds directly on injury prevention: first a student learns what the safe behaviors are, and then learns to judge whether a specific real-life choice measures up. Both skills matter, and Grade 3 is where the judging skill truly begins.

Safety Procedures for Real Emergencies

Beyond everyday injury prevention, schools and families also prepare for less common but serious emergencies — a fire, a severe storm, or an unexpected visitor who should not be in the building. That preparation happens through safety procedures.

Safety procedures are the specific steps a school, family, or community follows to keep people safe during an emergency, such as a fire drill, tornado drill, or lockdown. These steps are usually decided in advance by adults who have thought carefully about what keeps people safest, so that no one has to figure it out from scratch in the middle of a scary moment.

Common examples of safety procedures students might already recognize include:

1. Fire drill — walk (do not run) in a line to a designated outdoor meeting spot
2. Severe weather drill — move to an interior hallway or room away from windows
3. Lockdown drill — stay quiet, move away from doors and windows, and wait for an "all clear"
4. Home fire escape plan — know two ways out of every room and a meeting spot outside

Why Practicing Safety Procedures Matters

Knowing a safety procedure exists is not the same as being ready to use it. That is why schools run drills — practicing the same steps again and again until they become automatic, even under stress.

Practicing safety procedures means rehearsing the exact steps of a safety plan ahead of time, so that during a real emergency, students and staff can respond quickly and calmly instead of feeling confused or panicked. When a fire alarm actually rings, a brain that has practiced the drill many times can act fast — even if it feels scared — because the steps are already familiar. Practicing a safety procedure is like practicing anything else so many times that the body knows what to do, even if the mind feels nervous: practice now means calm action later.

This is a key idea for Grade 3: practicing safety procedures prepares students and staff to respond well in real emergencies. The practice itself is what turns a plan on paper into a real skill a person can use under pressure.

Diagram: From Drill to Real Emergency

From Drill to Real Emergency Workflow

Type: workflow sim-id: drill-to-emergency-workflow
Library: Mermaid
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain, summarize

Learning objective: Students explain how practicing a safety procedure prepares students and staff to respond in a real emergency, by exploring each step of a fire-drill workflow and its purpose.

Purpose: Show the connection between practicing a drill and being ready for a real emergency, so students understand why schools repeat drills rather than just memorizing steps.

Visual style: Simple top-to-bottom flowchart with rounded process boxes

Steps (every node must have a Mermaid click directive opening an infobox): 1. "Alarm or Signal Sounds" — Hover text: "A drill or real emergency always starts with a clear signal, like a bell or announcement, so everyone knows to begin." 2. "Stop and Listen" — Hover text: "Students pause what they're doing and listen for the teacher's instructions." 3. "Follow the Practiced Route" — Hover text: "Because the class has practiced this route before, students already know where to walk without needing to think hard." 4. "Walk Calmly to the Safe Spot" — Hover text: "Walking, not running, keeps everyone safer and helps adults keep track of the group." 5. "Adult Checks Everyone Is Present" — Hover text: "A teacher or staff member counts students to make sure no one is missing." 6. "Wait for the All-Clear" — Hover text: "Students wait calmly until an adult says it is safe to return or the emergency has ended."

Branch note: A side note box (not a decision diamond) clarifies "This exact sequence works whether it's a practice drill or a real emergency — that's the point of practicing!"

Color coding: - Blue: Signal and listening steps - Green: Movement steps - Orange: Adult-led safety check steps

Implementation: Mermaid flowchart with click directive on every node calling an infobox function that shows the hover text described above.

Helpful Tip

During any drill, treat it like the real thing — walk the route, stay quiet when asked, and listen closely. The more seriously you practice, the more ready you'll be.

Trusted Adults: Who Can Help

Every safety idea in this chapter connects to one more important idea: knowing who to go to when something feels wrong, confusing, or unsafe.

A trusted adult is a grown-up a student can go to for help with a difficult or unsafe situation — someone who will listen carefully, take the concern seriously, and help figure out what to do next. A trusted adult is not necessarily the closest adult in the room; it is an adult the student and their family already know cares about their safety and wellbeing.

Trusted adults can include:

• Parents, guardians, or other family members
• Teachers, school counselors, nurses, or principals
• Coaches, faith leaders, or other adults a family already trusts
• Police officers or firefighters in an emergency

A student should be able to name at least two or three trusted adults, both at home and at school, before they ever need one in an emergency. Waiting until a hard moment to figure out who to ask can waste precious time or lead to reaching out to the wrong person.

Situations where going to a trusted adult matters most include:

1. Someone online or in person asks for personal information that feels private
2. A shared message, photo, or video makes a student feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, or unsafe
3. A safety rule was broken and someone could get hurt
4. A real emergency happens and a practiced safety procedure needs to be followed
5. Any situation that simply feels wrong, even if a student cannot fully explain why

A student never needs a perfect explanation to ask for help. "Something feels wrong" is always a good enough reason to go to a trusted adult.

Diagram: Find Your Trusted Adults

Find Your Trusted Adults Graph Model

Type: graph-model sim-id: trusted-adult-network
Library: vis-network
Status: Specified

Bloom Taxonomy: Remember (L1) / Understand (L2) Bloom Taxonomy Verb: identify, describe

Learning objective: Students identify trusted adults across different settings (home, school, community) and describe what makes each one a good person to ask for help in a difficult or unsafe situation.

Purpose: Help students build a concrete mental map of multiple trusted adults, rather than relying on only one, so they always have someone to ask.

Node types: 1. Student (center node, blue circle) — the student themselves 2. Home trusted adults (green circles) — Example: "Parent/Guardian," "Grandparent" 3. School trusted adults (purple circles) — Example: "Teacher," "School Counselor," "School Nurse" 4. Community trusted adults (orange circles) — Example: "Coach," "Police Officer," "Faith Leader"

Edge types: 1. "CAN ASK FOR HELP" (solid gray line) connecting the student to every trusted adult node

Sample data: - Student → Parent/Guardian - Student → Teacher - Student → School Counselor - Student → Coach - Student → Police Officer (emergency situations)

Layout: Radial/force-directed, with the student node in the center and trusted adults arranged in a ring

Interactive features: - Hover a trusted adult node: shows a short description of that role and one example situation to bring to them - Click a trusted adult node: highlights the connection back to the student and opens a side panel with "What to say" sentence starters, like "I need help because..." - Drag nodes to rearrange; zoom and pan supported - A "My Own Map" mode lets students (with a teacher's help) relabel generic nodes with the actual names of their own trusted adults

Visual styling: - Student node larger and centered - Node color grouped by setting (home, school, community) as described above - Edge thickness uniform, since every trusted adult is equally reachable

Legend: Color key explaining home/school/community groupings and what the connecting line means

Implementation: vis-network JavaScript library, force-directed layout, click and hover event handlers wired to an infobox panel Canvas size: responsive, default 700x450px

Chapter Complete!

Great work, friend! You now know how to think before sharing, how to keep personal information safe, how to evaluate safety behaviors, why practicing safety procedures matters, and — maybe most importantly — who your trusted adults are. Healthy choices, happy you!

Wrap-Up for Teachers

By the end of this chapter, most Grade 3 students should be able to describe how sharing a message, image, or video could affect themselves or others; name at least two risks of sharing personal information and explain why such information should stay private; evaluate a specific safety behavior across at least two different environments (home, playground, road, water) and justify the judgment; explain why practicing a safety procedure prepares people to respond calmly in a real emergency; and name at least two trusted adults at home and at school. The MicroSims progress from classification (sharing scenarios) through genuine evaluation (the safety-behavior rating scale, matching the Grade 3 benchmark 3.5.1.2) to a relationship map that helps students internalize who to go to, not just what to do. Keep the tone in the personal-information and trusted-adult sections calm and empowering rather than frightening — the goal is confident help-seeking, not fear.

Quick Check for Read-Aloud Time — Click to expand

Ask the class: "If something online or in person ever feels wrong, what should you do?" Then reveal: "Tell a trusted adult — a parent, teacher, counselor, or another adult you and your family already trust. You never need a perfect explanation. 'Something feels wrong' is always a good enough reason to ask for help."