With social networks dominating your students’ personal lives, it’s important for you to address social media in the classroom.
You’ll want to cover detailed topics like cyberbullying and Internet safety, but it’s important to cover the basics of social media first!
Because the education world doesn’t move as fast and furious as the world of apps and posts, there aren’t many instructional material options out there that discuss social media.
You could create your own lessons, but where would you even begin?
To take the stress off your shoulders, we’ve pulled together the three best places to find social media lesson plans and activities for middle school:
- Teachers Pay Teachers
- Common Sense Education
- Business&ITCenter21
In this blog, we’ll give you some detailed information about each social media resource to help you decide which one(s) to use in your classroom.
Let’s jump in!
1. Social Media Lesson Plans on Teachers Pay Teachers
Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) is an online marketplace where teachers can share, sell, and buy resources like lesson plans and activities from each other.
Some of the best resources on TpT for teaching middle school students about social media include:
- Social Media Literacy - Looking at Social Media Use (Grades 7-10)
- Cyber Smarts -- Teach Kids About Social Media Safety (Grades 5-10)
- Digital Citizenship & Social Media (Grades 6-8)
Each of these resources is provided by well-known publishers on TpT and has a unique take on teaching students about using social media.
Social Media Literacy - Looking at Social Media Use introduces media awareness and how social media networks impact students today. For $3.75, you can use this social media activity to open up important discussions in your classroom before diving into more specific lessons.
Cyber Smarts -- Teach Kids About Social Media Safety focuses on helping kids make safe choices when using social media. With this $6.50 download, you'll access 22 pages of materials, including situation cards, a poster, vocab sheets, assessments, and more.
Digital Citizenship & Social Media ties together the concepts of digital citizenship, digital footprints, and social media with hands-on projects. For $5, you'll get 14 pages of materials, including warmups, a digital citizenship research project, and digital footprint activity.
All of the products include teacher and student resources, such as directions, discussion starters, and worksheets so you’ll have everything you need for each lesson!
The best part about these resources is they are created (and reviewed) by actual teachers. That means you can be confident in the quality and effectiveness of the lessons and activities!
However, if you’d rather use resources all developed by one publisher the next option could be just what you’re looking for.
2. Social Media Lessons from Common Sense Education
Common Sense Education is a well-known website dedicated to teaching digital citizenship and other 21st Century skills.
To tackle the topic of good social media habits in middle school, Common Sense Education has three great lessons:
- Who Are You Online? (Grade 6)
- My Social Media Life (Grade 7)
- Social Media and Digital Footprints: Our Responsibilities (Grade 8)
Who Are You Online? introduces students to the pros and cons of presenting yourself in different ways on social media.
The lesson includes a warm up, a video for classroom discussion, a class debate activity, a quiz, and related family resources. In total, it will take you approximately 45 minutes to get through all of the content.
My Social Media Life helps students better understand how connecting with others on social media can affect their feelings and relationships.
The lesson includes a warm up, a video for classroom discussion, student handouts, an exit ticket activity, a quiz, and related family resources. In total, this lesson will take approximately 45 minutes.
Social Media and Digital Footprints: Our Responsibilities helps students apply critical thinking skills when it comes to understanding how much information they share on social media.
The lesson includes an introduction video, a classroom discussion, an exit ticket, a quiz, and related family resources. In total, this lesson will take approximately 50 minutes to complete.
Overall, these lessons from Common Sense Education are packed with a large variety of materials and teaching strategies -- something that’s key to keeping middle school students engaged!
3. Living Online - Social Communication Module from Business&ITCenter21
The Living Online - Social Communication module from Business&ITCenter21 helps students learn to make good decisions about online behavior, use social media, and learn about smartphones.
The unit on social media is called Being Social Online and presented in five lessons:
- Introduction to Being Social Online
- Social Media and Its Uses
- Your Digital Footprint
- Protecting Yourself Socially
- It Goes Down in the DMs
Along with these interactive student lessons, you’ll find resources such as teacher presentations and class activities to supplement your lessons.
In addition, you get formative and summative assessments that are automatically graded. Overall, this module is perfect for a teacher looking for a resource that’s got meat behind it!
The best part about Business&ITCenter21 is that it’s more than just lesson plans or activity ideas. It’s a full-fledged curriculum that you can use to teach so much more than good social media behavior.
Altogether, it has more than 200 hours-worth of curriculum to teach digital citizenship, soft skills, career readiness, and business concepts.
In addition to the curriculum, Business&ITCenter21 includes a full learning management system with automatic grading, student progress reports, and more.
And because the system is digital, it’s regularly updated with new resources and information -- something you need when teaching topics like social media and digital citizenship!
Learn More About Living Online – Social Communication!
Business&ITCenter21 is here to make your life easier. Whether it’s talking about staying safe online or how to be a good digital citizen -- everything you need is in one place.
Click below to learn more about the social media lessons in the Living Online – Social communication module:
