Please find a really useful guide to You Tube safety for your children on our Internet Safety page. It highlights the safety options that need to be raised with any children using You Tube and also safety options for parents.

In the latest research by anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label it was found that69% of young people under 20 have done something abusive to another person online, while 17% of young people have experienced cyberbullying. We give advice for parents and carers concerned about cyberbullying and practical tips for how they can support their child.

Discussing online bullying with your child

It’s important to have regular conversations with your child about the online world, including issues like cyberbullying. This will help you to understand if they have ever experienced or witnessed online bullying for themselves, and give you an opportunity to support them and reassure them that you are always there to help.

Some questions which you could ask your child are:

• How can you be kind online?
• What would you do if someone was being unkind online?
• What do you think cyberbullying is?
• How is it different to physical bullying?

See our conversation starters for more help starting this conversation.

Developing empathy

We also need to support children in developing empathy and understanding the impact of their online actions. While it might be difficult to think about your child behaving negatively towards someone else, it’s worth bearing in mind that sometimes young people find it hard to identify what bullying is and may just think the behaviour is ‘banter’ and to be expected. It’s important they recognise what behaviour is acceptable and recognise how online actions can affect others. This can begin as soon as children start using technology; our storybook Digiduck’s Big Decision helps even the youngest internet users develop this understanding.

If your child has experienced cyberbullying:

• Let them talk
  Give them the space to share what they want to in their way and listen. Try to avoid the temptation to interrupt because you know what’s going on, prompt if necessary but let them do most of the talking.
• Don’t be shocked by what they tell you
  If there’s one sure way to put a child off seeking help, it’s making them feel embarrassed or ashamed about why they’re asking for help. Times change and some of the things young people do today may make us cringe sometimes, but the inherent behaviour is the same as it was when we were their age.
• Don’t deny access to technology
  When we speak to young people about barriers to getting help they often share that they are worried that their device may be taken away from them. Reassure them that this won’t happen if they speak up about something that has been worrying them online.
• Encourage them not to retaliate
  Although this can seem like the most tempting thing to do in a situation like this it’s very important that you do not retaliate to the cyberbullying. Most of the time the bully is looking for a reaction when they’re teasing or calling someone nasty names. Your child may wish to reply and ask the person to stop sending messages however this is not necessary and action can be taken without replying.
• Save the evidence
  It’s important to keep the cyberbullying messages that a child has received, whether through taking screenshots or saving the messages on the device. Saving the messages allows you to have evidence when reporting the cyberbullying.
• Talk to their school
  Schools play a vital role in the resolution of abusive online behaviours. They have a plethora of effective tools such as the Enable anti-bullying toolkit. They have anti-bullying and behavioural policies in place in order to provide a duty of care to all who attend. As such, they will want to know about any incidences that could potentially affect a child’s wellbeing. Take the evidence of bullying and any additional details about the context of the situation and length of time it has been going on for. It is helpful to discuss this with your child and you may want to speak to the school together.
• Talk to the police
  If you think that your child is in immediate danger don’t hesitate to call the police. Equally, if there is a direct threat of violence or harm within any conversation then you may also wish to contact your local police for support. As parents, any incident involving children will be extremely emotive. There has been a lot of stories about online abuse in the media and the majority of bullying issues can be resolved satisfactorily with support from your child’s school.

We looked at what it meant to be different, we talked with our talking buddies about how we were different and then shared our learning with our friends. Kole told us all it was OK to be a different colour as colour doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter how tall or small you are or what colour our eyes or hair is because we are all different but we are all equal. We also watched the story Rainbow Fish by Marcus Ffister about a Rainbow Fish who is a beautiful fish who finds friendship and happiness when he learns to share.

Gaming: resources for parents and carers

The UK Safer Internet Centre has published a leaflet for parents and carers providing information and advice about online gaming, and how to help support children and young people enjoy online games positively and safely.

Source: UK Safer Internet Centre  Date: 31 October 2017

Removing an online image or video

Childline is working with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to help young people who want to remove sexually explicit images of themselves from the internet. Young people can use the Childline portal to anonymously verify their identity using the Yoti app, and then submit their application to the IWF to have the image removed wherever it appears on the internet.

Source:

Childline  Date: 20 October 2017

Childnet is teaming up with Facebook and the Diana Award to deliver a project that will see thousands of young people across the UK trained as peer educators.

This support from Facebook will enable Childnet to grow the reach and impact of the Digital Leaders Programme, which is delivered as part of their work in the UK Safer Internet Centre.

Children’s use of the internet: literature review

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has published a literature review looking at children’s use of the internet, focussing on trends and emerging issues, and the online risk of harm to children and implications for safety policy and practice. Findings from the review include: children’s top worries online are pornography and violence, there is an emerging consensus that those already at risk offline are more likely to be at risk and vulnerable online, and there are currently very few independently evaluated online safety initiatives.

Source: UKCCIS  Date: 12 October 2017

Young peoples’ rights on social media

The Children’s Commissioner for England has launched child-friendly guides and teacher resources, developed with TES and the law firm Schillings, to help children to understand what they are signing up to when they use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Source: Children’s Commissioner for England  Date: 29 September 2017

Further information: Digital citizenship: young peoples’ rights on social media

Snapchat – new feature – “Snap Maps”

To check out what this feature means and how to help explain how to protect yourself on line please read the full article on our Internet Safety page under the curriculum tab.

This month we have received the 360* Internet Safety Quality Mark. It has been a project that all the school has been involved in working towards. This invaluable Quality Mark and our completion of the award proves the huge effort that the school has invested in Internet safety has been rewarded and shown impact. Our assessor Kenneth Corish was very thorough in his assessment of out Internet Safety Policies and approaches to safeguarding our children.

To read the full details of the assessment go to the Curriculum Page / Internet Safety.

Please visit the Curriculum Page – Internet Safety to view a list of Apps that may put your child at risk.

Internet safety resources for parents

The UK Safer Internet Centre highlights internet safety resources to help parents and carers ensure children stay safe online whilst getting to explore and discover new things. Resources include information about drawing up a family agreement about online use in the home, and the online issues facing children and young people, available in 13 languages.

Source: UK Safer Internet Centre  Date:12 July 2017

Thank you to all the staff in the Apple shop in Liverpool One for making the ICT Monitors trip really exciting and memorable. We made a short film with our friends and then played with all the new exciting equipment. The photos explain in more detail! 

Online safety conversation “icebreakers”

O2, as part of its partnership with the NSPCC to help all children and families in the UK stay safe together online, has created a series of weekly emails for parents and carers to help them start a conversation with their children about online safety.

Further information: NSPCC

EYFS decided to recreate Glastonbury today including the mud! Check out our photos in the children’s tab, under the key stages file. 

Today we enjoyed our second Forest School session. We reminded ourselves of our rules and Frankie and Jacob were keen to share with their friends about the rope boundaries. We investigated tool work and all listened to a tool safety talk and then we had a go at using a bow saw and a drill. We made jewellery out of wooden discs and brought them back to show our teachers.

Today we joined Louise and Molly who will be joining us in our Forest School sessions. Today we introduced ourselves to the environment of the forest and set out our boundaries and rules. We looked at hazards in the environment and played with the mud kitchen and investigation box. We loved bug hunting under the logs. We made sure we put the bugs straight back in their natural environment. We later built dens and made our own mud flag. 

Cyberbullying

Internet Matters has published findings from a survey of parents looking at their concerns about how children can experience cyberbullying differently based on gender and online activity. To find out more visit out Internet Safety page under the Curriculum tab.

Source: Internet Matters  Date: 22 May 2017

Further information: Cyberbullying (PDF)

Check out our early years summer gallery for pictures of our recent learning during our topic “Trolls”and “Tom and the Island of Dinosaurs”.

Also Nursery have been using the Bee Bot to travel around the map we made of Troll Village. We made volcanoes out of papermache and experimented to make our own volcano erupt.