Part of Lesson Plan: Fire Safety and Shop Emergencies

Activity Overview / Details

When students enter the room I either have the attached information on "types of fires" printed and hand it out to them or just projected onto the screen at the front of the room and tell them to write down the types and definitions. Either way, they will need this information in order to identify the types of fire emergencies that occur in the video we are going to watch together as a group to determine if they can accurately identify where they occur.

What the students don't know is, this video is from the old television show In Living Color and has Jim Carey doing his Fire Marshall Bill character setting up some precarious situations involving fire safety for an actual classroom of "students". I have found it to be a fun way to start our conversations about fire safety and situations that can be prevented while still illuminating real classifications of combustibles.

Show the video and have them identify each class of fire they observe on their notes and then discuss once the video is done.  After this video, I ask for students to more seriously consider the video via a couple of minutes discussing some situations where we might not be paying attention but creating a fire hazard in the shop. Especially the mixture of hot metal (or sparks) and paper or some other fuel (clothing, oils, etc.) and various accelerants that might be common in our shop.