Safer Internet Day 2021 was held earlier this week, on Tuesday 9th February. The event was marked at BCS with a week of Online Safety lessons across the whole school, with our focus on the theme “An internet we trust: exploring reliability in the online world.”

We all know that the internet has an amazing range of information but how do we separate fact from fiction?

In Pre-Prep the children have been sharing true information about themselves and then some facts that are not true. As a class they tried to decide which facts were true and which were not and realised that even though they know their friends well, it is still sometimes very difficult to separate fact from fiction. This helped the children understand that not all they see on the internet is true and that they have to be very careful what they believe. The children have also been learning from Detective DigiDuck about different ways that will help them to decide what information they can trust on the internet and what to do if they are unsure.

In Prep, the children had a go at deciding for themselves if some facts about meerkats were true or false. We then heard from one expert who urged us all to fact check our sources and not just to assume that everything we read online is true. It most certainly is not! Each class finished the lesson with a quiz. The Year 5 and 6 children had a go at the official Safer Internet Day online quiz while the Year 3 and 4 children tackled some equally tricky questions on the BCS Safer Internet Kahoot quiz.

Mr Hill and Mrs Wingfield