You can engage with Safer Internet Day by registering to use one of three online resources, designed to help you deliver outcomes required as part of the Relationships Education curriculum. Just contact trish@arieltrust.com
The theme of this year’s event is, ‘Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online’. Two of the three resources, currently available free to Merseyside Primary Schools with support from Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership, are specifically designed to encourage children to practice communication skills that they can use to talk about life on line.
Send me a Selfie (Skills for Healthy Relationships) focuses on the expectation that sharing images of yourself is a normal, safe part of teenage relationships. This interactive resource provides children with an opportunity to practice saying no. They watch a short film in which a boy and a girl begin an online relationship, the boy and his mate very quickly apply pressure, asking the girl to share images of herself. What is she going to do? How can she get help? How will the boys respond? Children are asked to think about these questions, they step into the role of the characters from the film and they act out different endings to this story. They use drama to practice refusal skills, bystander intervention and asking for help.
Skills to Resist Radicalisation helps children to recognise the way in which extreme organisations try to groom young people. It provides an opportunity to practice refusal skills and asking for help. It asks children to think about who they will talk to if someone shares extreme material with them. Pupils from Years 5 & 6 are asked to practice communication skills, to think about what words they would use and they are engaged in role plays designed to help them become confident using complicated vocabulary.
One of the teachers involved in a pilot project told us, “Children have become critical thinkers. They have developed improved refusal skills and have used these skills within the lessons. I have also seen children use these skills independently when dealing with friendship issues, which was great to see”.
These online resources are provided free to primary schools across Merseyside and you can access them by contacting trish@arieltrust.com Further details of the individual programmes and current training dates are in the flyers below.