Common Sense Curriculum

After reading through some of the lesson plan ideas for digital citizenship, I was able to find three lessons that I feel would fit nicely into my 5th grade curriculum. These lessons are great to use in the classroom to help students be more aware of what is "proper online etiquette" or appropriateness. 

The first one that I feel would be a great starting point was the Rings of Responsibility, which helps students understand what it means to be a digital citizen and the responsibilities they need to take seriously. I liked the downloadable worksheets that went along with the lesson, allowing students to think about their responsibilities to themselves, their friends and family, as well as their community. This lesson also has great resources to help students understand protecting themselves when using private/personal information, as well as what to do in a cyberbullying situation.

The second one I liked was The Key to Keywords, which will help students when they are using search engines to look up research for various projects--in 5th grade, I can see my students using it for science fair research, as well as the research they complete for their 4th quarter writing assignment. This lesson is great to discuss with students the reliability of various sites and it even has a video called "Solomon's story" that shows what a student might go through when searching something on the internet.

The last lesson I thought would be beneficial in my classroom is Whose Is It, Anyway?, which is a lesson that goes over plagiarism with students, as well as the importance of paraphrasing when conducting research and taking notes. Just as I mentioned above, I can see myself using this for science fair research as well as the research students do for writing.