Digital Literacy and Well-Being (Year 6)
About this unit:
Designed to be taught across a whole school year - 18 short lessons from Common Sense Media's comprehensive, research-based and fully updated Digital Literacy and Well-Being Curriculum.
The resources cover six key topics: Healthy Habits, Privacy and Security, Digital Footprints and Identity, Relationships and Communication, Cyberbullying and Online Harms, Information and Media Literacy.
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.
Why this? What does it build on?(opens in new tab)
Age-appropriate lessons from Common Sense Media are provided for all year groups. The scheme is structured to build and reinforce previous lessons across all the key topic areas.
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?(opens in new tab)
The digital literacy content in this unit will be built upon in Key Stage 3. We also offer Common Sense Education units of work for Digital Literacy and Online Safety for Year 7 and Year 8.
Other Year 6 units also include online safety and digital literacy messages, such Manipulating 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.
About this unit
We are proud to implement Common Sense Media's excellent Digital Literacy and Citizenship curriculum within our scheme of work. All links go directly to the original materials, nothing is hosted on our site or controlled by TeachICTNT.
The curriculum resources are shared for free under A Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. As a result, this page 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 license.
When you follow links to the Common Sense Media website, you will need to join for free to access the resources. This can be done with an existing Google or Microsoft account or by signing up with your email address.
Common Sense Media Curriculum home page
Find everything from Common Sense Media's Digital Literacy & Well-Being Curriculum, including all units, lesson resources and implementation guides.
Teacher training
Common Sense Media have put together a self-led teacher training course. which walks you through the Common Sense Digital Literacy & Well-Being Curriculum, exploring its core principles and experiencing the ready-to-use lesson plans first hand. By the end, you'll have everything you need to help your students not only survive, but thrive in our tech-filled world.
You can also watch a webinar about the introduction and implementation of the curriculum here.
Scope and sequence
The curriculum features 147 lessons, with 13 to 18 lessons per year group. Each new lesson is designed to be roughly 20 minutes in length, and collectively, the lessons for each year cover all six of Common Sense Media's core topics. For best results, we recommend implementing the full curriculum throughout a school year. The scope and sequence document outlines this recommended plan.
Integration Guide
The new curriculum adapts to your school's structure. Use it in computing lessons, during PSHCE or class times - whatever fits your school's schedule and priorities. While we recommend year-long implementation, you can also teach the lessons individually or reorder them as needed.
The Integration Guide offers a variety of examples for how to make things work in your school setting.
Key vocabulary for this unit
Advertising - messages or photos that are made to persuade someone to buy a certain product
Article - A written story in a newspaper, magazine, or online news site
Avatar - An image or character that represents a person online
Balance - All of the parts are in the correct -- though not necessarily equal -- proportions
Benefit - Something positive that results from a situation
Bias - An unfair belief about a person or group based on a stereotype
Bully - The person who is doing the bullying
Bullying - Unwanted and aggressive verbal, social, or physical behaviour towards another
Bystander - Someone who sees a bullying or cyberbullying situation, but doesn't do anything to stop it
Clickbait - An image or headline that tries to get you to click on it, usually for advertising purposes
Commercial - Intended to make money.
Curiosity Gap - The desire people have to figure out missing information
Cyberbullying - using digital devices, sites, and apps to intimidate, harm, and upset someone
Digital media - information that comes to us through the internet, often through a tablet, smartphone, or laptop
Empathy - To imagine the feelings that someone else is experiencing
Gender stereotypes - Oversimplified ideas about how women and men are or should be
Headline - The title of an article, usually printed in big, bold letters at the top
Inference - an educated guess based on evidence
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.
News - New information about recent or important events
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)
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)
Risk - Something negative or dangerous that could come from a situation
Target - The person who is on the receiving end of the bullying
Upstander - a person who supports and stands up for someone else
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