Unit Plan 33 (Grade 4 Counselor): Safe, Respectful, and Responsible Choices

Focus: Combine safety, boundaries, advocacy, digital respect, and responsible decision-making. Students sort scenarios into safe/unsafe, respectful/disrespectful, or responsible/irresponsible choices. The counselor helps students explain why the best choice protects people, supports learning, and shows maturity.

Grade Level: 4

Subject Area: School Counseling (Safety • Boundaries • Responsible Choices)

Total Unit Duration: 1–2 weeks, 30 minutes per session

I. Introduction

This Grade 4 counseling lesson helps students review safe, respectful, and responsible choices across school and digital spaces. Students connect prior learning about boundaries, privacy, help-seeking, empathy, and decision-making to real situations they may see in classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, group work, bathrooms, buses, and digital communication.

Students sort realistic scenarios into safe or unsafe, respectful or disrespectful, and responsible or irresponsible choices. The counselor guides students to explain not only what the better choice is, but why it matters. The goal is for students to understand that mature choices protect people, support learning, respect boundaries, build trust, and help the whole school community feel safer and more respectful.

Essential Questions

• What makes a choice safe, respectful, and responsible?
• How do boundaries, privacy, and digital respect connect to safety and maturity?
• How can empathy help students make better choices?
• Why do responsible choices protect people, support learning, and build trust?

II. Objectives and Standards

Learning Objectives — Students will be able to:

1. Identify choices that are safe, unsafe, respectful, disrespectful, responsible, or irresponsible.
2. Explain how personal space, body boundaries, privacy, belongings, and requests to stop should be respected.
3. Analyze school and digital scenarios involving teasing, unsafe behavior, boundary violations, exclusion, privacy, device misuse, or peer pressure.
4. Choose mature responses that protect people, support learning, and build trust.
5. Use empathy to recognize how choices may affect classmates’ feelings, safety, and sense of belonging.
6. (Optional Session) Practice decision-making through scenario sorting, role-play, or a safe/respectful/responsible choice challenge.

Standards Alignment — Grade 4 (ASCA-based Custom)

• C:S6.4b — Respect Personal Boundaries and Use Assertive Communication
  • Understand personal space, body boundaries, privacy, belongings, and respectful ways to say, hear, and respond to “stop.”
  • Example: A student says, “Please stop touching my backpack,” and immediately stops when another student asks for space.
• C:S6.4c — Make Safe, Respectful, and Responsible Choices
  • Choose actions that support safety, learning, respect, and responsibility in classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, group work, and digital spaces.
  • Example: A student chooses not to join online or in-person teasing and tells a trusted adult when someone is being harmed or targeted.
• C:S3.4a — Show Empathy and Respect for Others
  • Recognize how others may feel and respond with kindness, respect, and care.
  • Example: A student notices a classmate is being left out of a game and says, “You can join our team.”

Success Criteria — Student Language

• I can tell whether a choice is safe, respectful, and responsible.
• I can respect boundaries, privacy, belongings, and requests to stop.
• I can explain how choices affect other people’s feelings, safety, learning, and trust.
• I can choose a mature response in school or digital situations.
• I can use empathy to make choices that protect people and support the community.