For educators
A story-led reinforcement layer.
Three short sessions built around one read-aloud, designed to sit alongside your board’s approved curriculum rather than replace any part of it.
Status: draft. In expert review. Not for classroom delivery.
The classroom materials are published here as an educator preview, deliberately, before they are ready. They have not completed child-development, child-sexual-abuse-prevention, survivor-informed, legal, or institutional safeguarding review.
They are here so that the people who would have to deliver them can tell us what is wrong with them first. Please read them. Please do not run them with children yet.
The three sessions
1. Spot the tricks — 20 to 25 minutes
Read the book. Introduce Notice, Go, Tell. Emphasise that Red did nothing wrong when she answered the Wolf’s questions, and that she did nothing wrong when her feet would not move.
2. Boundaries and secrets — 20 minutes
Practise “safe is more important than polite.” Sort surprises from speak-secrets. Use correct anatomical terms as ordinary body vocabulary. Establish that a child may say no.
3. Tell and keep telling — 20 minutes
Build a private safe-adult hand. Practise help-seeking phrases. Teach that a child can tell a second grown-up if the first one does not help — and a third.
What children should be able to do afterwards
- Recognise age-appropriate examples of boundary-crossing, pressure, unsafe secrecy, and requests that are not okay.
- Name more than one safe adult, including one outside their household.
- Use at least one help-seeking phrase.
- Say that familiar and friendly people can still behave in ways that are not okay.
- Say that they are not responsible for another person’s harmful behaviour.
The Wolf’s Tricks cards
| Card | What it means to a child |
|---|---|
| The Question Trick | Somebody asks for information you do not need to give. |
| The Come-With-Me Trick | Somebody tries to change where you are going. |
| The Polite Trick | Somebody calls you rude for keeping a boundary. |
| The Secret Trick | Somebody wants touching, pictures, threats or worrying behaviour kept secret. |
| The Disguise Trick | Somebody you know and like can still do something that is not okay. |
| The Come-Closer Trick | Somebody keeps asking for more closeness than you want. |
| Frozen Feet | Sometimes your body goes still. That happens to grown-ups too. It is never your fault. |
What not to teach
Each of these is common, well-intentioned, and counter-productive.
- “Bad people look scary.”
- “Never talk to strangers.”
- “You should have known.”
- “Good children fight back.”
- “You have to say no.”
- “Why didn’t you tell sooner?”
If a child discloses
Stop the lesson and move into your safeguarding response.
Listen calmly. Do not interrogate and do not investigate. Do not promise secrecy. Use supportive statements: “Thank you for telling me.” “This is not your fault.” “I’m going to get help.”
Then follow the law and your organisation’s reporting procedure. In Ontario, reasonable suspicion that a child may be in need of protection triggers a legal duty to report directly to a children’s aid society.
This is a summary, not a protocol. Your board’s procedure governs.
A note on Ontario’s annual requirement
Ontario’s Bill 123, Erin’s Law (Child Sexual Abuse Prevention and Reporting), 2024, added section 170.0.1 to the Education Act. It requires every board to have a policy under which pupils are engaged annually, in a developmentally appropriate manner, on child sexual abuse prevention and reporting — including age-appropriate techniques to recognise abuse and tell a trusted adult.
These materials are designed to support that work in the Kindergarten band, which is where age-appropriate material is thinnest.
For boards and administrators →
To be exact about what we are and are not claiming: nothing here is approved, endorsed, or accredited by the Ministry of Education, by any school board, or by any child-protection organisation. No efficacy claim is made. These materials have not been evaluated. Any board considering them should treat them as an unreviewed draft.