Are you wondering how to teach middle school online safety? Our downloadable internet safety skills worksheet and PDF will make teaching your next lesson a breeze! Make sure to read the Lesson Plan below for more tips & tricks, activity ideas, and a sample video lesson.
Teaching Online Safety to Middle School Students
Everyday Speech’s Cyber Skills materials teach nuanced digital etiquette. Learners begin to recognize the intent of online messages and posts and craft appropriate responses. Lessons cover communicating over text, using social media platforms, and talking on the phone.
Lesson Plan – How to Teach Middle School Online Safety with our Cyber Skills PDF
1. Gain a Sense of What’s Important to Your Learners
Start a conversation about what types of social media or online communication your group or student uses the most. Then, ask them if they experience any challenges or have questions about the way others might use it or anything that they could think of that they want to get better at. Gaining this buy-in from older students is crucial to their willingness to participate and overall social success.
2. Teach the Differences between Online vs. In-Person Communication
The way we communicate online is different from how we act and talk in person. Make a list of things that change, like using slang or abbreviations, using emojis vs. in-person facial expressions, and what it means when words are in all caps. Next, discuss what we can learn from these differences and how to interpret social clues from what is written.
3. Use Our Free Sharing on Social Media Question Prompts Worksheet/PDF
The downloadable PDF at the top of this page offers 10 social scenarios for your middle school students to practice online safety skills. Talk through each scenario and see how they would behave in each one. This online activity can be printed out or just displayed on the screen for ease of use!
Sample Video:
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