Keeping Safe — Trusted Adults — Year 2 Lesson Plan
National Curriculum: PSHE/RSE — Safety and the changing body: how to ask for advice or help for themselves or others, and to keep trying until they are heard; how to report concerns or abuse, and in terms of appropriate adults to contact (KS1 statutory guidance).
Overview
Pupils develop a nuanced understanding of the difference between strangers and trusted adults, moving beyond the overly simple 'stranger danger' message. They explore what makes an adult trustworthy, practise identifying their own safety network, and build confidence in the skills of seeking help. The lesson is calm, reassuring and empowering in tone.
Learning Objectives
- Understand that not all adults are equally safe and explain what makes an adult trusted.
- Identify at least three trusted adults in their personal safety network.
- Know and practise a personal safety message for situations that feel unsafe.
- Understand that it is always safe and right to tell a trusted adult if something worries them.
Key Vocabulary
Suggested Lesson Structure
Open with a quick sorting activity: show picture cards of different people — a police officer, a stranger in the street, a parent, a teacher, an older sibling, a neighbour. Ask pupils to put them in order from most trusted to least trusted for seeking help. Discuss responses and draw out the key question: what makes someone a trusted adult?
Introduce the concept of a trusted adult: someone you know well, who is safe, who listens and who will help. Explain that trusted adults are different from strangers and also different from adult acquaintances you know a little. Discuss that the safest thing to do if an unfamiliar person approaches is to go to a trusted adult immediately — you never have to go with someone you do not know.
Work through four scenarios as a class, discussing what the person in each should do. Scenarios include: being approached by a stranger in a park; being asked to keep an uncomfortable secret by an adult; feeling that something an adult does is not right. For each, reinforce the message: notice the uncomfortable feeling, trust your instinct, tell a trusted adult.
Pupils create a personalised safety network, drawing and naming at least three trusted adults at home, at school and in the wider community. They also practise the personal safety message by completing sentence frames: 'If I feel unsafe I will go to [name] and I will say...' Teacher circulates to support, ensuring every pupil has identified real, reachable trusted adults.
Teach pupils the NSPCC PANTS rules in child-friendly language: Privates are private. Always remember your body belongs to you. No means no. Talk about secrets that upset you. Speak to a trusted adult. Practise a chant or song version to aid memory. Close by affirming that telling a trusted adult is always brave, always right and will never get them in trouble.
Common Misconceptions
- The traditional 'stranger danger' message can cause confusion because many children are hurt by people they know, not strangers. Reframe safety around trusted adults and body feelings rather than a binary stranger/not-stranger distinction.
- Pupils may worry that telling an adult about an uncomfortable situation will cause trouble for themselves or the other person. Reassure them directly and repeatedly that reporting a concern is always the right and safe thing to do.
Prior Knowledge
Pupils should already be able to:
- Understanding from Year 1 that trusted adults exist in school, home and the wider community.
- Awareness that some situations feel safe and others do not, and that feelings in the body can be a signal.
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