On Tuesday 6th February, we joined schools and youth organisations across the UK in celebrating Safer Internet Day 2024.
Safer Internet Day is a global campaign to promote the safe and responsible use of technology, which calls on children and young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers and more, to help to create a better internet.
Using the internet safely and positively is a key message that we promote in school, and celebrating Safer Internet Day was a great opportunity for us to re-emphasise the online safety messages we deliver throughout the year.
We would be delighted if you could join us in celebrating the day by continuing the conversation at home. To help you with this, the UK Safer Internet Centre have created some free activities and information for parents and carers which are available at: Parents and carers - UK Safer Internet Centre. Whether you have 5 minutes to start a conversation or hours to spare, there are top tips, quizzes and films which you can use at home with your child.
Please enjoy seeing what we were able to get up to across our school day below!
Reception
Key Focus: How do I keep safe online? Know age appropriate ways to keep safe online.
SCARF-Harold was worried about our safety when online so he told us to watch the video storybook Jessie and Friends. This helped us to understand what to do if something pops up on our screen that makes us feel worried or scared inside (we should trust our feelings). We discussed our five trusted adults, these are the people we should go to if we are worried or scared.
We then listened to the story The Adventures of Smartie the Penguin (Childnet). Smartie taught us a song to keep us safe online and we then made Smartie penguins and wrote safety messages to help us remember to keep safe online.
Year 1
To celebrate Safer Internet Day, Year 1 first discussed our favourite things to do online. We listened to the Story of Smartie the Penguin and thought about themes such as, 'pop ups', age appropriate content and talking to strangers online. We then designed our own 'Internet Safety Mascots' to help us to remember our internet safety rules:
'Before you tap and click...'
'You need to stop and think...'
'And tell someone!'
Year 2
In Year 2 we started the day with our Safer Internet Day Assembly and enjoyed discussing the positive things we enjoy using the internet for. Our favourite things to do on the internet included playing games, listening to music and watching videos.
We discussed how technology has changed over time and the internet with it. The children enjoyed sorting a pictures of a range of computers, music players, phones and gaming equipment and we discussed how more modern technology allows us to do so much more with.
After thinking about what we can now use modern technology for and how we use the internet, we read a story about how changes on the internet e.g. pop ups, getting random messages can become a worry for us. From the story and from various discussions throughout the day we made some key rules to follow with using the internet and some advice of what to do if there was a situation that made us feel worried.
We wrote letters to help some people who were in a tricky online scenario and also wrote a 'tweet' with some key online safety information. It was tricky trying to fit some advice into 140 characters!
Year 3
On Tuesday Year 3 had a great time learning about Artificial Intelligence as part of Internet Safety Day. We learned that whilst it can be fun, we must be careful and tell a trusted adult if we see or hear anything that we are unsure about. Creating posters to help keep others safe allowed us to share ideas and consolidate our learning.
Year 4
After enjoying the BBC 'Live Lesson', we took part in the activities and got creative making posters about AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Our main focus after that was on being safe when playing games online. We looked at all sorts of possible scenarios and discussed the games we play and the different platforms that are used. We also talked about the reasons behind games being given 'Ratings' and the fact that we should not be playing games with content that is inappropriate for children of our age. Bringing all these threads together, we created Good (safe) and Bad (unsafe) profiles to use online.
Year 5
We spent the day focusing on how to keep safe online. We watched a live lesson which taught us all about AI and how things that we see online are not always as they seem! We completed a class quiz and got all the answers right!
We used our knowledge of AI and safety to create informational leaflets. We ended the day by creating comics based around the online issues that we learnt about in the day. All our comics included a super safety hero who could save the day!
Year 6
Here in Year 6, we have had a fabulous day exploring safety online. We were able to consider a variety of big questions, thinking about how AI has changed our lives and could continue to. We spent some time exploring what we think technology might look like in the future and thought about differing persuasive techniques online creators might use to persuade their audience! Finishing off our day, we also created our own board games to encourage making the right choices and remaining safe.