St. Thomas Aquinas

This year, our E-Safety Ambassadors have worked hard to create a newsletter which will share our amazing work in school as well as any news updates surrounding online safety. Our first newsletter shared some information about our new team this year and why we wanted to help support our peers. Please find a copy of our newsletter below. 

001 Safer Students

This year, our E-Safety Ambassadors have had new roles and even more responsibilities than ever before. Instead of focussing on E-Safety for one day of the year, our team have taken charge of their classes E-Safety lessons each half term. After some training from Mr Washington, each pair of ambassadors was able to go back into their classroom, stand in front of their peers and ask a very important safeguarding question based on the learning in the E-Safety lesson. By supporting leadership at all levels, our children are growing in confidence and thriving in their new responsibilities. 

Unlike any year before, this February, our school was in lockdown. Mr Washington created two assemblies, one for FS/KS1 and the other for KS2. While some of the content was different, the message was still the same...

Let's create an Internet we trust. 

 With this in mind, the children were asked three questions. 

1. Why do you enjoy going online? 

2. How do you know if you can/can't trust something online?

3. Who do you go to when you are online and feel like you need help? 

 All teachers were impressed with their classes responses and chose a selection to include on the new school display. Once the children are back in school, these responses will be written up and we will share with you what our new display looks like. I hope you're excited to see it. 

This year, like every year, our E-Safety Ambassadors helped to host the National Internet Safety Day on February 11th. 

We gathered the school together to introduce the topic this year which was 'Free to be Me'. This topic discussed the positives you can experience by using the internet safely but also highlighted the long-lasting nature of things you post online. To support the powerpoint we also read a story about Goldilocks. Unlike the traditional tale, in our story Goldilocks was OBSESSED with her online following and posted more and more pictures/videos every day. When her following were getting bored of her, she decided to break into the three bears house and post pictures of her adventure. The three bears were, understandably, annoyed about this and had more than enough evidence to show the policeman. Goldilocks was mortified about what she had shared and after many, many hours of chores learnt her lesson.

Always think before pressing send. 

Following the assembly we set challenges for every class to complete that week and help raise the profile of Online Safety within school.

Foundation Stage and Year 1 had class discussions about different devices which they might see or use around school. After the discussions they wrote words/phrases or drew pictures of how they use these devices. This helped start discussions about what is sensible to use on these devices. 

Years 2, 3 and 4 each had class competitions to create posters for our school devices. These posters had to include rules about the usage and upkeep of these devices. All entries were fantastic and have been put into books which are kept with each device. A few winners were selected and enlarged and laminated. These are now proudly displayed around the school and we have already seen a positive change in how these devices are used. 

Years 5 and 6 had the hardest challenge. They had to create informative videos about the areas of Online Safety and Cyber Bullying. They worked in teams and created storyboards for their videos before completing them in one take! A feat many professionals struggle with.