Lesson plans

Teach digital citizenship with detailed lesson plans. Find resources for teachers of every stage, from primary to secondary.

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Detailed plans to teach digital citizenship

Everything teachers need to teach digital citizenship, from reliable sources. This selection of resources for teachers will help students build a range of skills and knowledge.

1

NSW Department of Education (Stage 2 to 5)

Teachers in NSW can access Cybermarvel's online lesson plans on the Department of Education's Universal Resources Hub.

The lessons cover how to:

  • Be safe online (Stage 2) – Students can explore five simple online safety topics using video, peer discussion and student-centred tasks. The activities are designed to improve engagement and online safety learning outcomes.
  • Be kind online (Stage 3) – Students can learn and discuss the signs of cyberbullying and explore their feelings if they see or experience this behaviour. This activity also supports building respectful and kind behaviours through the use of engaging classroom activities.
  • Be a digital detective (Stage 3) – Digital literacy skills allow students to feel empowered to question things they find online. They can learn to critically evaluate online information and images to make informed decisions, share responsibly and maintain their online reputation.
  • Be a digital leader (Stage 4) – This 3 x lesson learning sequence is designed to teach students about how content is created and used online. It allows them to use sources and check to see if they are authentic and trustworthy, or if bias exists. It is recommended that this resource is used digitally to gain the benefit of the hyperlinks within. A list of all the online resources is at the end of each lesson.
  • Be an empowered digital citizen (Stage 5) – Young people are constantly navigating tricky online scenarios and situations, which don't always have right or wrong answers.

If students are facing challenges online, the right way to respond can often be unclear. Acknowledging this complexity helps students dig into the messiness of the issues they face and come up with thoughtful and realistic actions.

2

Using technology safely (Stage 3 to 4)

The department's technology workshop notes (Stage 3 to 4) and PowerPoint presentation provide a complete lesson plan.

It contains interactive activities on:

  • choosing strong passwords
  • spotting phishing websites and emails
  • being safe, respectful and responsible with technology.

You can ask student technology leaders to run the session, or use it as a peer support task. Activities can be implemented in the classroom by you, the teacher. 

Download the workshop notes (DOCX 171.93KB) and Powerpoint presentation (PPTX 10.47MB).

You can also download this student-led techology project (DOCX 658.49KB). It is a simple scaffolded learning activity where students investigate a driving question around their technology use.

3

Office of the eSafety Commissioner (all stages)

These cyberbullying and digital citizenship lesson plans aim to build a range of skills, knowledge and behaviours in students that will help to keep them safe online. Find the Office of the eSafety Commissioner's lesson plans for primary and high schools.

Teachers can select from a range of lessons on online safety and digital citizenship for any year group.

Some important themes are:

  • privacy and security
  • scams online
  • respectful behaviours
  • cyberbullying
  • making good choices and managing risks.
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Minecraft Education (Stages 4 to 5)

Years 7 to 8

Years 7 to 10 

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Courses from Google Education

  • For teachers and students The Digital Citizenship and Safety Course is a self-paced 80-minute online course. You'll learn how you can help create a safe and positive experience online for everyone you come into contact with. Once you have successfully completed the course, you can download a Digital Citizenship and Safety toolkit to use in your classroom.
  • Lesson plans with posters and games, Be Internet Awesome covers privacy, kindness, safety and more. For families, there are discussion starters and sample family digital agreements.
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Common Sense Education curriculum (all stages)

This extensive resource includes planned lessons, study material and parent/guardian handouts for K to 12.

The Common Sense digital citizenship curriculum covers:

  • media balance and wellbeing
  • privacy and security
  • digital footprint and identity
  • relationships and communication
  • cyberbullying, digital drama and hate speech
  • news and media literacy.

You'll need to log in with a free Common Sense Education account to access the lessons and take-home materials. All resources are Google Workspace documents – they're visible to anyone, but to make copies that you can modify you'll need a Google Drive account.

More classroom resources

A collection of tools to help teachers create engaging lessons in digital citizenship.

1

ThinkUKnow (Stage 1 to 6)

An evidence-based education program, ThinkUKnow is led by the Australian Federal Police in partnership with the IT industry.

Teachers can:

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Teaching Kids News (Stage 1 to 4)

Kid-friendly news articles written by volunteer professional journalists. Every story includes curriculum-based discussion questions and related links.

Teaching Kids News was started by a primary school teacher and a freelance journalist. Their goal is to present news and current affairs in a way that's accessible for students in Years 2 to 8. It covers all news topics and has classroom activities around media literacy.

3

Media literacy with the ABC

Helps students identify reliable and unreliable sources they might see in a news item.

The ABC's interactive Source Checker introduces students to the:

  • range of sources that journalists use
  • strengths and weaknesses of these resources in relation to the context of the story and their value in helping the audience understand the issue.

Teachers collect a range of online articles from trustworthy and untrustworthy websites with a combination of sources that are real, fake, satirical and historical. Working in small groups and using a checklist, students assess each item and award it an overall reliability score.

Download the Source Checker activity guide.

4

NetSmartzKids (Stage 3)

NetSmartzKids features activities and animated videos for older primary school children, that explore digital citizenship and safety. You can use a single episode to introduce a particular topic, or the whole series to form the basis of a unit of work on digital citizenship.

5

English (Stage 4)

Simple lessons for Years 7 and 8 English teachers.

Be an upstander

Sharing content online

Being safe online

Social media and defamation

Protecting your identity

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Health with the YeS Project (Stage 5 to 6)

A social health program designed to enable positive change in digital spaces. The eSafety Commissioner's  YeS Project encourages young people to be positive leaders and supportive friends, especially online.

Use the program as a 2-day intensive workshop, or as 10-week in-class lessons, or anything in between. You can choose from 12 different modules and find guides to starting a positive discussion around digital self-identity and support.

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Cyberlite lesson plans

Headquartered in Singapore, Cyberlite was established in 2021 as a social enterprise to deliver online safety education in an engaging and impactful way.

Teachers can access for no cost cyber safety lessons for Stages 2 to 5 on digital identity and online privacy and security.

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