Digital Literacy and Citizenship Classroom Curriculum
Curriculum overview
Curriculum by Grade
Research
- Review the respected research on which curriculum is based
- Learn more
Take the grounded approach to teaching a slippery subject
Common Sense Media offers this FREE Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum to help educators empower their students and their school communities to be safe, responsible, and savvy as they navigate this fast-paced digital world.
- NO COST to your school. It's all free thanks to generous support from our philanthropic supporters.
- Research-based learning. We created the lessons with the support of leading researchers from around the country.
- Video-rich and real-world. Students engage quickly and stay plugged in because you're using kid-tested media resources to teach the new media.
- Total teaching flexibility. Integrate the modular lessons with any subject in any order. Online and print materials let you teach in any classroom and send lessons home to engage parents.
- Compliant and aligned. The curriculum helps you comply with E-Rate's education requirement, and it's aligned to ISTE, AALS, and ELA standards.
- Currently available for grades K-12.
Sample Lesson - Cyberbullying
In this lesson, Cyberbullying: Crossing the Line for grades 6-8, students learn to distinguish good-natured teasing from cyberbullying. They watch a documentary-style video of a young person who has been involved in a cyberbullying situation and talk as a group about her experience.
Download the lesson plan and handouts | View the lesson online and watch the video
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Educator Updates
Check out our latest blog post, which takes you through the digital citizenship teaching process. From researching the issues, to finding what type of curricula work best, this article gives you a great overview of where we are with teaching kids to be smart and safe online citizens.
You may have noticed that Google has been doing a lot of work around their privacy policies and teaching safe internet use for kids. In support of that effort, we've joined forces to bring an interactive guide for kids, parents, and educators, called ThinkB4U. This "choose-your-own-adventure"-style learning site features some of our best curriculum materials designed with teaching internet safety in mind.
Laura Richter, a 7th Grade Technology Integrationist at Skowhegan Area Middle School, is an educator with a passion for technology and learning. Check out Laura's recommendations of free tech tools to integrate into teaching our Digital Citizenship curriculum.
