Family Tip 1: Define your terms
Make sure kids understand what cyberbullying is: repeated and unwanted mean or hurtful words or behavior that occur online (through texts, social media posts, online chat, etc.).
Discussion around common parental concerns.
Once kids go online, their chances of finding cyberbullies, haters, and trolls is, sadly, quite high. Find age-specific guidelines, videos, and articles to help with tough conversations -- whether your kid is a bully or is being bullied. Explore answers to all your cyberbullying questions, age-appropriate advice, school resources, and more from parents and experts.
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/cyberbullying
Wikipedia.org is where millions of people stop first for information. Tools like it are what make the internet so valuable. But they also teach an important lesson, one you can start teaching your kids now: don’t believe everything you read.
Family Tip Sheet: bit.ly/OlyNMFR2
Website Update: The sites are now up and running! If you experience a warning page when navigating to your building's site, you can safely proceed past it. That issue will also be resolved soon. Thank you for your patience and we hope you find the new site beneficial!
Website down @ 12:00 PM.
We are doing a visual refresh of our website at noon today. There will be some downtime, but we should be up and running before long! If you would like a sneak peak and a tour of the new layout, checkout this video:
https://youtu.be/FTG2kREb3Cw
Fearless Fact Finding!
Check out this list of trustworthy resources to help you learn what's true (and what is not!) on the web. You can even use one of them to look back in time and what was on a website in the past!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #5: Choose a Variety of Sources.
Show your children how you get news and information from different places, and explain how you make your choices. Use words like "credible," "trustworthy," "respected," and "fair." Ask them where they get their information, and if they think about those same words when choosing. As kids get older, introduce the ideas of bias, satire, and clickbait.
If a picture's worth a thousand words, do the words always tell a true story? One way to find out is through a reverse image search. Search with an image instead of a keyword and see what you discover!
O.N.E. Kindergartners used the Quiver app to turn their coloring projects into 3D masks.
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #4: Discuss Fact vs. Opinion
Play around with ideas and decide which are facts and which are opinions. Ask: How tall are you? What's the best food in the world? Do rocks sink or float? Do you like dogs? Point out that both facts and opinions show up in the news, but opinion is usually labeled.
Olympia North Student council has joined with the Danvers Lion's Club in donating a filling station that has been installed in the K-1 Commons. Student Council used money from the annual Candy Grams project to fund half the cost of the filling station. We thank the Lion's Club for helping out on this project and for their continued support of our students at Olympia North.
Pay close attention to those news articles and be a Deceptive Detective!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #3: Explore Different Sides of a Story!
Use real-life examples to help kids understand how people can view the same situation with totally different perspectives. One child might experience a game on the playground as fun, while another might feel like the rules are unfair. Sibling conflict can be a great example of how two people can have wildly different opinions about the same event. With older children, talk through controversial subjects and take turns arguing for different sides to help kids understand various viewpoints.
Kids find and read news in lots of different ways. But studies show they're not very good at interpreting what they see. How can we help them get better? Teaching your students about the structure of online news articles is an important place to start.
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV1
Family Activity: bit.ly/OlyNMFR1
Fake news is nothing new. Check out this timeline to learn about some ways it has been utilized throughout history to influence society. Ask your family about other examples that you know of and why they were used!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #2: Play "Spot The Ad"
When you see advertising on TV or on a billboard, ask your children to figure out what the ad is selling. Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes it's not. Help them explore why certain pictures, sounds, or words are used to sell certain products.
Filter Bubble Trouble!
When we get news from our social media feeds, it often only tells us part of the story. Our friends -- and the website's algorithms -- tend to feed us perspectives we already agree with. Show students ways to escape the filter bubble and make sure their ideas about the world are being challenged.
https://youtu.be/mh1dLvGe06Y - BBC
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #1: Encourage Healthy Skepticism
Help your children analyze the messages around them -- from toy packaging to Instagram posts to news headlines -- and question the purpose of the words and images they see. Teach kids how to use fact-checking tools like Snopes and FactCheck.org.
Thank you to Rusty Richards and the staff at Minier Christian Church for providing us a tasty boxed lunch today from Jason's Deli! Our entire staff loved it! We always appreciate your support of Olympia North Elementary!
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV2
All media comes with an author and an agenda. Help kids think critically about any media they view with critical questions that dig below the surface. And to really empower kids, have them create their own media with these same questions in mind.
