‘Brigades In Schools’ is a fire safety education program presented by the CFA targeted at primary school students.

The Woodend CFA regularly presents the program at both Woodend Primary and St Ambrose schools, with sessions specially targeted to the classes involved and the school’s curriculum.

The lessons are delivered in the classroom by trained CFA career and volunteer members.

‘Brigades In Schools’ aims to teach knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours related to:

• Personal fire safety
• Home fire safety
• Outdoor fire safety
• Bushfire preparedness, and
• CFA in the community

Children can play an important role in spreading fire safety messages to their families and the wider school community.

Brigades In Schools’ lessons are designed to be interactive with plenty of opportunities for children to be actively involved learning how to “stop, drop and roll” if their clothes are on fire, how to make an emergency call and how to “crawl low in smoke” to safely escape a house fire.

‘Brigades In Schools’ lessons and worksheets have been written for children from prep to grade 6. The material is grouped to suit the following levels:

• Prep to grade 2
• Grades 3 and 4
• Grades 5 and 6

Where appropriate CFA personnel are able to bring the truck and other fire fighting equipment to the school and explain its application to the children, however the focus of the lesson is generally around fire safety and prevention.

Program Design and Curriculum Links

The BIS program is designed to enable students to demonstrate strategies that deal with unsafe or emergency situations and fire safety. The program is strongly aligned to the learning outcomes in the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) and within the key learning areas of the Curriculum Standards Framework II (CSFII).

For further information about Brigades In Schools, contact the Community Education Co-ordinator at the Woodend CFA – 1^st Lieutenant Mike Dornau on 5427 3680.