Digital Literacy and Online Safety (Year 5)

About this unit:

Six lessons taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent digital citizenship curriculum, covering a wide range of topics including well-being, privacy and security, online identity, relationships, communication and the media.

National Curriculum Links - Computing KS2

The content of this plan cover the following NC strands: 

  • use search technologies effectively, appreciate how results are selected and ranked, and be discerning in evaluating digital content
  • select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information
  • use technology safely, respectfully and responsibly; recognise acceptable/unacceptable behaviour; identify a range of ways to report concerns about content and contact.

 

Curriculum Mapping

Why this? What does it build on?

This unit builds on important online safety messages from Key stage 1 (Keeping safe and exploring technology and Keep safe and create) and more recently, our Digital Literacy and Online Safety units for Year 3 and Year 4. In those units, students learn about screen time issues, privacy, digital footprints, online communities, online bullying, copyright principles, our responsibilities to others online, passwords, their own online identities, and fake imagery.

Communication and collaboration and Computational thinking - Alien contact both also have elements of online safety in their lessons and cover communicating safely with others online, and safety when using social media.

Having this broad knowledge of digital literacy and online safety issues is vital for young people to grow up to be confident and responsible users of technology and digital citizens in our world.

What comes next?

The digital literacy content in this unit will be built upon in even more depth with our Digital Literacy and online safety units for Year 6, as well as when they reach Key Stage 3.

Other units also include online safety and digital literacy messages, such as Building Collaborative websitesManipulating images and Inside the internet.

View our full curriculum map

Take a look at our full curriculum map to see how units across all year groups, from Year 1 to Year 6 link.

A note about this unit

Common Sense Education

The lessons in this unit or work are taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent Digital Citizenship curriculum. Their resources are shared for free under A Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International LicenseAs a result, this plan can be accessed without logging into our site and is FREE FOR ALL TO USE. It can be shared and used by anyone under the terms of that licenseThe original materials can be found at: https://www.commonsense.org/education/uk/digital-citizenship

 

Education for a Connected World

The Education for a Connected World framework describes the Digital knowledge and skills that children and young people should have the opportunity to develop at different ages and stages of their lives. It highlights what a child should know in terms of current online technology, its influence on behaviour and development, and what skills they need to be able to navigate it. Common Sense resources are recommended in the Education for a Connected World framework as essential skills for today's learners. Both resources together, along with Project Evolve, provide you with an excellent set of tools to deliver a comprehensive online safety and digital literacy curriculum.

Education for a Connected World's strands align with Common Sense Education's Digital Citizenship strands in the following way:

 

Look out for more detail in each of the lessons in this unit, about the strands and statements from Education for a Connected World that link to each lesson.

Unit Resources

Unit Assessment Sheet

Use our simple assessment system to measure your students' success in this unit of work.

Lessons

Lesson 1

  • Learn the "What? When? How Much?" framework for describing their media choices.
  • Use this framework and their emotional responses to evaluate how healthy different types of media choices are.
  • Begin to develop their own definition of a healthy media balance.

Lesson 2

  • Identify the reasons why people share information about themselves online.
  • Explain the difference between private and personal information.
  • Explain why it is risky to share private information online.

Lesson 3

  • Define the term "digital footprint" and identify the online activities that contribute to it.
  • Identify ways they are -- and are not -- in control of their digital footprint.
  • Understand what responsibilities they have for the digital footprints of themselves and others.

Lesson 4

  • Define "social interaction" and give an example.
  • Describe the positives and negatives of social interaction in online games.
  • Create an online video game cover that includes guidelines for positive social interaction.

Lesson 5

  • Reflect on the characteristics that make someone an upstanding digital citizen.
  • Recognise what cyberbullying is.
  • Show ways to be an upstander by creating a digital citizenship superhero comic strip.

Lesson 6

  • Define "copyright" and explain how it applies to creative work.
  • Describe their rights and responsibilities as creators.
  • Apply copyright principles to real-life scenarios.

Full Computing Glossary

Take a look at our full computing glossary, plus key vocabulary for each age group.

Key vocabulary for this unit

Attribute - giving credit to the person who created something, such such as listing the author's name and date, or a citation

Copyright - legal protection that a creators have over the things they create

Cyberbullying - using digital devices, sites, and apps to intimidate, harm, and upset someone

Digital citizen - someone who uses technology responsibly to learn, create, and participate

Digital footprint - a record of what you do online, including the sites you visit and the things you post; it can also include things that others post that involve you

Digital media - information that comes to us through the internet, often through a tablet, smartphone, or laptop

Inference - an educated guess based on evidence

intellectual property - the ownership of something you create, giving you a right to how others use it

Hardwired - something you are born with

Griefing - irritating or angering people in video games by being mean, destructive, or cheating

License - a clear way to define the type of copyright creative work has so others know how they can use it

Media - all of the ways that large groups of people get and share information (TV, books, internet, newspapers, phones, etc).

Media balance - using media in a way that feels healthy and in balance with other life activities (family, friends, school, hobbies, etc).

Media choices - time spent watching, listening to, reading, or creating media.

Online video game - a video game that is played through the internet

Personal information - information about you that cannot be used to identify you because it is also true for many other people (e.g. your hair colour or the city you live in)

Plagiarism - using someone’s creative work without providing attribution

Private information - information about you that can be used to identify you because it is unique to you (e.g. your full name or your address)

Register (online) - to enter your information in order to sign up and get access to a website or app

Responsibility - a duty you have to yourself or others

Social interaction - talking or messaging with people to develop friendship or community

Upstander - a person who supports and stands up for someone else

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