In the journey to foster responsible digital citizens and ensure their safety in the ever-evolving digital landscape, it’s crucial to provide comprehensive unit and lesson plans. As a follow-up to our series on eSafety education, this blog post offers a valuable resource—an exemplar unit plan sample. This plan is thoughtfully designed to empower educators with an integrated unit suggestion for teaching eSafety to 9-10 year-olds.
Unit Guide: The two ‘Cybers’: Cybersafety and Cyberbullying
| Wk | # | Topic | Overview |
| Week 1 | 1. | HPE: Safety Overview | Introduces students to online safety. Explain different sources of information and accuracy through a demonstration of the eSafety Commissioner’s website (ACPPS039). Research ways to balance time online (ACCPS040). |
| Week 2 | 2. | HPE: Cybersafety: Being a strong digital citizen – part 1 | Distinguish between private and personal information (ACPPS036). Create a mock online persona to ensure student online safety and protect private information (ACPPS036). |
| 3 | HPE: Cybersafety: Being a strong digital citizen – part 2 | Identify strategies to protect student’s private information by setting passwords and being mindful of what they share (ACPPS040). Understand who are safe adults for reporting breaches (ACPPS035). | |
| Week 3 | 4. | Digital Technology: Communicating ideas | Recognise that numbers, texts, images, sounds, animations, and videos are all forms of data when stored digitally (ACTDIK008). Plan, create and communicate ideas and information as part of a group, applying agreed ethical and social protocols (ACTDIP013). Use iMovie or Movie Maker to create a short video to communicate one idea on cybersafety (ACTDIP013). |
| 5. | HPE: Cybersafety: Keeping our information safe – part 1 | Review range of websites, including revisiting the eSafety Commissioner’s website, to understand cyber safety (ACPPS036). Interpret key cybersafety messages and the influences on safe choices (ACPPS036). | |
| 6. | HPE: Cybersafety: Keeping our information safe – part 2 | Describe and apply strategies that can be used in situations that make students feel uncomfortable or unsafe (ACPPS035). Create the first half of cybersafety /cyberbullying poster using Canva, Gloster or Adobe Spark (ACELY1697). | |
| Week 4 | 7. | Digital Technology: Information systems | Identify information systems and why they are needed to meet personal, school or community needs (ACTDIP012). Understand that information systems store different types of information (ACTDIP012). |
| 8. | HPE: Cyberbullying: Powerup to bullying part 1 | Brainstorm areas of student’s lives where they can become exposed to bullying – extend to online “cyberbullying” and its impact on young people (ACPPS037). Explain “online communities” and the rules and procedures for joining and leaving the communities. | |
| 9. | HPE: Cyberbullying: Powerup to bullying part 2 | Brainstorm positive and negative aspects of belonging to online communities and connections students have with their community (ACPPS038). Recognise strategies for interacting with online communities (ACPPS038). | |
| Week 5 | 10. | Digital Technology: Collaborating safely online | Revisit “online communities” to understand personal, school and community uses (ACTDIP012). Identify that information systems collect personal and private data and revisit online safety protocols (ACTDIP012). |
| 11. | HPE: Cyberbullying: Reporting cyberbullying part 1 | Investigate government and other organisations that support student’s online safety (ACPPS036). Recognise how organisations like the eSafety Commissioner’s website, Bullying. NoWAY!, and KidsHelpline and BeyondBlue help students be strong against Cyberbullying (ACPPS036). | |
| 12. | HPE: Cyberbullying: Reporting cyberbullying part 2 | Identify strategies for managing Cyberbullying situations (ACPPS038). Create the second half of their cybersafety /cyberbullying poster using Canva, Gloster or Adobe Spark (ACELY1697). | |
| Week 6 | 13-14 | HPE: Project Based Assessment | To complete the assessment students undertaking the: – short multimedia video production will create a storyboard, film and use iMovie / Movie Maker to edit scenes and add music. – short multimedia story will create a storyboard, source creative commons pictures, and draft their short story in Book Creator. Students publish their videos / short stories to the class and receive feedback from other students before the final edit and submission. The final videos will be published on the class intranet as part of lesson 15 Digital Technologies. The video or short story creates a cybersafety message for the school community. Students are supported with the following prompts: – Provide at least five examples of private information. Explain how you can keep private information safe. – Explain why it is important to have a strong and secure password. Given an example of a strong and secure password. – Describe a strategy you can use if you feel unsafe online. How will this help you? – Explain two ways students can be exposed to bullying online. Why is this bullying? – Identify actions you can take if you are being bullied online. – Identify at least two organisations that support students online. |
| 15. | Digital Technology | Students consider their privacy needs to avoid divulging personal data as they finalise their HPE work (ACTDIP013). Students produce group work in a timely fashion (ACTDIP013). Students publish their HPE summative assessment in the controlled online forum (ACTDIP013). |
English curriculum is detailed in a separate unit plan which details 4 lessons per week. Among other descriptors, the English Curriculum is focusing on:
- Exploring how persuasive text and images are used in online advertising to entice young people to share private information (ACELA1490).
- Writing, examining and analysing online advertising (ACELA1488).
- Participating in online searches of digital information from reputable websites and identifying features of online texts, including drop-down menus, links, graphics and layouts (ACELA1793).
- Reviewing persuasive written and visual techniques and examining language (ACELY1690).
Using Canva, Gloster or Adobe Spart to design and publish a website landing page representing persuasive text features (ACELY1697).
See an example lesson plan here and assessment exemplar here.
