Digital Literacy and Wellbeing (Year 2)

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About this unit:

Designed to be taught across a whole school year - 13 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 KS1

The content of this plan cover the following NC strands: 

  • recognise common uses of information technology beyond school
  • use technology safely and respectfully, keeping personal information private; identify where to go for help and support when they have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies.
  • use technology purposefully to create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content

Curriculum Mapping

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.

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.

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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.

 

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Year 2 Lessons

Please note that all age groups are shown in the US grade system. 1st Grade is equivalent to UK Year 2  (6/7 year olds).

All lesson links below provide:

  • Objectives,
  • Key vocabulary
  • Lesson materials
  • Lesson plan

 

Year 2 Context - Recognition and Connection

Year 2 children are typically starting to have more exposure to various apps, games, and content online, along with more basic literacy skills. They're also beginning to recognise how technology connects them to a wider community beyond their immediate classroom or family.

These lessons introduce frameworks like the Internet Traffic Light to guide simple decision-making about online content. Students begin developing skills for distinguishing between different types of information and media, while learning to navigate their expanding digital world with growing confidence and awareness.

Suggested lesson sequence and delivery:

The curriculum is designed to be best delivered through the whole school year, giving a 'little and often' approach to these important messages.

However, there is flexibility in how they are covered as each lesson is only approximately 20 minutes long. There is no one-size-fits all approach and so consider what is best for your school.

Lessons could be grouped together and delivered in chunks, taught individually around your other computing topics through each term, or perhaps delivered separately through PSHCE lessons, allowing extra time to cover other computing units in more depth.

 

Autumn

1. Pause & Think Online (Updated)(opens in new tab)

2. Managing Device Distractions (Updated)(opens in new tab)

3. Curiosity Tellers(opens in new tab)

4. Internet Traffic Light (Updated)(opens in new tab)

5. Words Can Help or Hurt(opens in new tab)

 

Spring

6. My Digital Footprint(opens in new tab)

7. How Tech Connects Us(opens in new tab)

8. Media: What's the Purpose?(opens in new tab)

9. Understanding Ads(opens in new tab)

 

Summer

10. Step In, Step Out(opens in new tab)

11. Is It OK to Share?(opens in new tab)

12. Fact vs. Opinion(opens in new tab)

13. Autoplay: Helpful or Not?(opens in new tab)

 

Open all Year 2 lessons(opens in new tab)

Full Computing Glossary

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

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