25 ideas for embedding online safety throughout your curriculum

With the full time return of Scottish schools and schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland due in September, our partners at Childnet have produced a resource to support teachers in embedding online safety throughout the curriculum.

We know the online world is a key aspect of most young people’s lives and using technology has become even more important in helping us all to stay connected during the covid-19 lockdown. For teachers and staff returning to school full time, delivering online safety messages to support their pupils is more important than ever, but with the disruption to the previous school year – time has also become even more precious!

Looking for ways to weave in online safety messages across a school’s curriculum is both efficient and offers a creative way for pupils to bring their learning to life by making links to the world around them. Pupils can also foster a deeper understanding of the messages by applying their learning in different situations.

To help you do this in your school, we have created a new primary and secondary leaflet. One side suggests practical things you can do across your whole school to put online safety firmly in the centre of school life. For example, suggestion number three is to, “make pupils the experts” by using a peer to peer approach and encourages collaboration. Suggestion number seven reminds you to “include online safety in policies” and to make sure your school guidelines and expectations cover not just pupil’s offline behaviour, but their online behaviour too.

The other side of the poster suggests 25 creative ways to embed online safety messages across different subject areas. For example, in Primary Maths you might, “teach about place value and large numbers by looking at how many followers online celebrities have. Talk about public sharing online and the risks.” In Secondary Art, you could, “Debate whether the internet allows everyone to be an artist, or if it is damaging creativity.”

The leaflets can be displayed in your staffroom or emailed as an attachment to your colleagues. Why not make it the focus of next term to use one strategy a week in different subject areas?

Download the Primary and Secondary versions here.