Classroom resources

A lesson about identifying kindness online from Azoomee

Learning objective

To be able to identify what kindness online looks like.

Success Criteria:

• I can recognise when someone has been unkind online

• I can suggest ways which I can be kind online with my own family and friends

• I can recognise that being kind online is just as important as being kind in the real world.

The lesson

Starter: 10 Min

Start the lesson by explaining that today we will be talking about kindness. Ask the children “What is being kind?” “What ways can we be kind in school/at home/ with our family?” Take some of the children’s suggestions and write them up on a flipchart or the board for later reference. Watch the Search it Up episode JackAttack v Robotron. Afterwards, ask the children to discuss briefly in partners what happened in the episode. Potential questions: What did you think about the way Jack acted while playing with his friend online? Why? What did he do? How do you think his friend Robbie was feeling? Is being kind online the same as being kind offline? Allow children time to debate this. If they think it is different why is this? How is it just as important?

Main: 10/15 Min

Prime the students for this activity by asking them to think about the many ways people communicate, share and interact online, by phone, tablet, etc. – you can provide some examples like texting, video calls, playing games and so on. Print and cut out (or have the students cut out) the examples of online interactions provided with this lesson. Have the students work in small groups to discuss and sort the examples into three categories: kind, unkind and not sure. You may wish for each group to paste the examples down onto a large sheet of paper. Circulate the groups and encourage discussion around the examples if you can. Once the groups have completed the activity, review some or all of the provided examples as a class and ask the groups to share how they categorised each example and why. Promote debate by asking questions around some of the even more seemingly obvious kind/unkind examples. The exercise here is to explore “what being kind online looks like”, but also establishing that context and content can play a large part in whether an interaction comes across as kind or unkind. For example, sending someone a happy birthday message can be kind, but what if the message communicates something sarcastic or outright mean?

Plenary: 10 Min

Can any of the children’s examples of kindness written on the flipchart/board early in the lesson be translated to online examples, other than those they reviewed in the lesson? For example, if children said ‘sharing is kind’ then you could prompt them to think of nice things they could share online. Children can brainstorm their ideas and add them to their group sheets or write them in their books. Ask each group to feedback with one or two examples of online kindness. Remind children how being kind online is just as important as being kind offline because it has the same effect on people on the other side.