Online Safety
Online Safety & Digital Awareness
Online Safety is integral to our responsibility to ensure that children are kept safe in a rapidly changing digital world. Digital parenting is also a key aspect to maintaining children’s safety at home.
The development of children’s digital awareness is woven throughout the Computing curriculum and also forms a part of our RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) and Health Education provision.
Online Safety Texts
Safer Internet Day
Our school takes part in Safer Internet Day which includes differentiated activities across the school.
We have also held workshops across KS1 and KS2. The children are drawn into discussions through the use of texts and narrative such as ‘Webster's Friend’ and 'Webster's Email'.
In Year 4, the children considered the importance of kindness and respect when online, linked to the text 'Troll Stinks' by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross. The children shared their advice about showing kindness and respect online, in role as the characters. Children in Year 6 explore scenarios and dilemmas they might face in a modern digital world, through the discussion of appropriate online behaviours.
Digital Awareness
We employ a range of texts and narratives to engage the children in discussions about their learning. These carefully selected texts are applicable across key stages and each explore different aspects of our digital world.
Children in Year 5, for example, explored the text ‘When Charlie McButton Lost Power’ by Suzanne Collins.
The narrative engages children with the implications of our increasing use of technology for our personal relationships and questions whether the impact this has on us is always positive.
The children analysed the feelings, thoughts and actions of Charlie McButton and this stimulated a debate about the role of technology in our everyday lives.
Children have also engaged with Google’s ‘Interland’ which forms part of their ‘Be Internet Awesome’ campaign. This gave the children the opportunity to enhance their digital literacy skills by assessing and evaluating online behaviours across a range of online scenarios.
