Learning "safety comes first" through video modeling opportunities.

Use technology as a means to capture your students' interest while reinforcing safety skills. There are many skills that need to be learned by students to navigate their way in and around school. Students with autism and other students in Special Education can have a difficult time knowing safety skills. Safety skills related to school can be: reading community/safety signs, traveling safely in the hallway (walk on the righthand side, keep hands to yourself, do not touch student work on bulletin boards, etc..), communicating appropriately with peers and adults in the hallway (appropriate words, volume, tone of voice) and using crosswalks, following lunchline/cafeteria rules and knowing how to get to your destination in a safe and timely manner. All of these skills tie into real life skills that help people be safe in their communities as well.

A. Engage students by choosing a safety topic around your school as it relates to your class.
B. Use an interactive whiteboard for technology integration to develop T-charts for appropriate and inappropriate ways of demonstrating safety. For instance, your class could focus on navigating a busy hallway. Different individuals could focus on various parts of navigating the hallway:
1. Safety and manners for opening doors, holding doors
2. Watching for others - what to do when you come across a group of students that are in your way.
3. Walking in a safe manner - carrying your supplies, watching out for others, pace of walking
4. Talking appropriately - greeting others, keeping your volume under control.
5. Following rules and safety expectations - Many times students with Autism are "rule followers" and often call out loudly when they interpret other students as not following the rules. This can become a safety issue, or even a bullying situations (as the bully or the vicitm).
C. Students can role play the examples of how to demonstrate the skills in an appropriate manner as well as an inappropriate manner.
D. Once students have practiced and rehearsed on a regular basis, you can create videos to help reinforce the behaviors.
E. Video tape students using camcorders. Use thumbdrives and/or memory cards to transfer the video to your computer. Students can work on editing their videos on individual computers or on an interactive whiteboard with a projector as a whole class.

This lesson helps develop creativity for teaching and learning new skills as well as collaboration and communication with peers as videos are developed. In addition, it helps with building technology integration into your plans to enhance these skills.