The middle school curriculum includes lessons on:

Digital Media and Your Brain: From Fortnite to Snapstreaks, technology has sneaky ways to keep kids online as long as possible. Indeed, lots of tweens and teens admit they feel “addicted” to their phones or the apps and games they use. Common Sense’s curriculum helps students understand the many ways digital media tries to hook us and what we can do about it to achieve a healthy balance.
Sexting and Relationships: It’s natural for teens to be curious about their emerging sexuality. But most middle schoolers aren’t prepared for the risks of exploring this in the digital age. Common Sense’s curriculum helps students think critically about self-disclosure in relationships and practice how they’d respond to a situation where sexting — or a request for sexting — might happen.
Hate Speech: Unfortunately, hate speech, misogyny, and other forms of derogatory language are now ubiquitous online. Common Sense’s curriculum helps tweens and teens understand how online hate speech hurts people and communities.
Identifying Fake News: The web is full of questionable stuff, from rumors and inaccurate information to outright lies and so-called fake news. So how do we help students weed out the bad and find what’s credible? Common Sense’s curriculum helps students dig into why and how false information ends up online in the first place and learn how to evaluate the credibility of what they’re finding online.

The Common Sense Digital Citizenship Curriculum is available free to all schools thanks to the generous support of the following foundations and donors: the Best Buy Foundation, the Bezos Family Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, the Morgan Family Foundation, Niagara Cares, the Sherwood Foundation, Symantec, and the Wasserman Family Foundation.

Instant Insights /

Curriculum to combat serious concerns facing middle schoolers

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