“Situational awareness requires outward focus, listening, observing, and consideration of the dynamics of the situation as well as an inward awareness to manage ourselves to be the most effective.”- Lee Ellis.
As used in daily speech, situation awareness refers to the present-moment cognizance or understanding needed to move around, operate equipment, or maintain a system. As a psychological notion, situation awareness has become a synonym for words like intelligence, alertness, attention, weariness, stress, compatibility, and workload.
It simply involves being aware of your surroundings and where you are to help people and organizations be more mindful, educated, and capable of making better decisions.
Situational awareness is a skill that can be taught and learned with the help of some games, apps, and books. You may raise your child’s self-assurance and personal safety by training them to be more aware of their surroundings. The trick is to make it entertaining and enjoyable.
Situational awareness checklist to evaluate significant observational skills
A list of questions a student should be familiar with is included in the following. The more truthfully the youngster responded to the question, the more conscious they are of their surroundings and circumstances.
- Do you get a lunch break?
- Do you remember your roll number?
- Are your teachers friendly and understanding towards you?
- Do you know your address?
- Do you know the safety or emergency exits during an emergency?
- Do you get aggressive with friends sometimes?
- Are you aware of good touch and bad touch?
- Are you able to read, learn and write in a classroom environment?
- Do you get holidays on festivals?
- Are you aware of all your subjects?
- Are your friends good for you?
- Are you aware of your school duration?
- Do you remember your parent’s phone number?
- Does your society/ apartment have guards?
- Do you need to wear a particular uniform in school?
- Is your father a working person?
- Do your parents pick you up from school?
- Do you travel by school bus?
- Do you have friends in the neighborhood?
- Does your bus driver drive safely?


Crucial points to note for effective situational awareness checklists
A situational Awareness checklist should be used regularly in schools during a child’s growth. You can give your kids numerous suggestions based on the outcomes of the situational awareness checklist.
1. Don’t offer children an extensive list of cautionary items.
Because it is so overwhelming, they won’t recall it and could choose to disregard it. Consider the fundamentals first—strangers and vehicles.
2. Try out a few things.
Choose an item to observe, while walking or driving, such as license plates from another state. Kids learn to glance around and notice things by doing this.
3. Observe people.
Ask your youngster to choose a person in a mall or amusement park and describe that person. What height are they? What do they have on? What do they believe the person’s age to be? What sort of employment may they perform? This increases the observational, awareness, and alertness skills of the child.
4. Share contact details.
Ensure your young children are familiar with the fundamentals, such as their names, addresses, and phone numbers. Establish whom they may and cannot share the information with, such as a teacher at school but not a stranger. One of your top priorities as a parent is keeping your children safe.
Significance of situational awareness checklist
Situational awareness is the observation and comprehension of an occurrence by a youngster, including all of its risks, dangers, and operational operations. It also includes the child’s expectations of how the situation will play out, given their behavior. Making wise judgments requires having a solid sense of the circumstance. When transferring leadership, it’s crucial to make sure that situational awareness is maintained.
Using the situational awareness checklist, you may evaluate the child’s performance on a regular basis. Additionally, it may be utilized for conversations, safety drills at tailgates, or one-on-one issue resolution (to performance or skill gaps) in the industry.
Three components make up the situational awareness checklist: observation, understanding, and anticipation. You observe what is happening around you and take in all the elements of your environment.
- You take in everything in your environment and pay attention to what is happening around you.
- You are aware of the circumstances you are in.
- You predict what will happen next based on what you perceive to be happening right now.
Conclusion
Being prepared and informed gives you power. We want you to share with your kid the confidence they need to face any scenario. Situational awareness is a skill that can be taught and learned. You may raise your child’s self-assurance and personal safety by training them to be more aware of their surroundings. Situational awareness expands everyone’s degree of personal security and safety. The key to keeping your child safe, especially while you’re not around, is to teach them to be alert to their surroundings. Every youngster should understand the importance of situational awareness. Knowing possible hazards in every circumstance and taking action to prevent them or lessen their impact as needed are examples of situational awareness.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,