Julia Belvin

Digital Citizenship Unit

Grade Level: 3rd

Teacher: Kaitlin Wilson

Unit Topic: Respectful and responsible online communication- discussion posts and digital

etiquette

Unit Lessons:

Lesson One: Using an online discussion forum (on district LMS “CLTS”)

Lesson Two: Creating a Flip Video

Lesson Three: Responding to a Flip Video or CTLS discussion post

Unit Objective: The student will participate in online discussions by creating a post on a CTLS

discussion board and a Flip Topic, then choose a post to respond to.

Lesson Goals:

- The student will respond to an online discussion topic

- The student will create a video that address the topic and clearly communicates their

thoughts to the listener

- The student will develop an appropriate response to peer’s discussion posts.

Learner Analysis:

This digital citizenship unit is being designed for a class of 3rd graders at Shallowford

Falls Elementary School. Mrs. Wilson’s class has 19 students, 9 girls and 10 boys, many of

which have had access to technology for years but have had little to no experience with online

communication being used in an academic context. This class has 9 gifted students, the students

in the gifted program do have more experience responding to classmate’s assignments than the

students who are not in the gifted program. This class also has a few students with special needs.

There is one student with Tourette’s and two students who are deaf/hard of hearing. The

students in this class have just received one-to-one student devices this school year, so they have

had limited opportunities to access technology in this capacity before this year. These students

are in 3rd grade, so they are also just learning how to appropriately interact with their peers in

person, so they need to practice the online skills as well.

When thinking of a goal for this unit with Mrs. Wilson, we were thinking back to the

2020-2021 virtual school year and how we loved using Flipgrid to check student understanding

and allow students to feel more connected with their classmates when they were learning from

home. Students who have not had proper instruction on how to interpret a discussion prompt and

respond to a classmate struggled to formulate posts, some posting videos of them making faces,

some saying good job, etc. During that time, our county was also developing our own learning

management system, CLTS, which now offers an online discussion board feature for teachers

and students to encourage communication. By preparing this unit for Mrs. Wilson’s class, we are

hoping to prepare her class to be able to productively communicate with classmates when using

online discussion tools, CTLS and Flipgrid.

 We believe that these students also struggle with communication skills in general because

they all completed their first year of elementary school as virtual kindergarteners, spent much of

their first-grade year learning remotely, and many of them did not have the opportunity to

participate in after school clubs, activities, or sports. Working on appropriate communication

skills in general is going to be an important skill to review as teaching them to be online

communicators as well.

Instructional Design (Morrison, Ross, and Kemp Model):

Instructional Problems: Students do not know how to have a productive, academic discussion

with a classmate when asked to respond to a topic or prompt.

Learner characteristics: The class consists of 19 8- and 9-year-old students. The students have

recently received one-to-one student devices and need to work on collaboration skills. These

students have spent about half of their time in elementary school learning virtually and have not
had a solid foundation of communication with peers, in-person or online. Students at this school

have learned to respond to prompts using the RACE strategy in 2nd and 3rd grade. Visuals are

displayed in the classroom to support students who may need support on constructing a response.

Task Analysis: During this unit, students are going to be asked to use their collaboration skills

to type a response to a CLTS discussion prompt, create a Flip video responding to a topic, and

create a respectful response to a classmate’s post (on CLTS or Flip).

Instructional Objectives: The student will participate in online discussions by creating a post

on a CTLS discussion board and a Flip Topic, then choose a post to respond to.

- The student will respond to an online discussion topic

- The student will create a video that address the topic and clearly communicates their

thoughts to the listener

- The student will develop an appropriate response to peer’s discussion posts.

Content Sequencing: The unit will begin with a lesson on the importance of digital etiquette,

respectful communication, and using the CTLS discussion posts features. We will model the

appropriate language needed to respond to a post and the online features available on the

discussion post. Students will then respond to the CTLS discussion board prompt.

The next lesson will discuss similar skills, but students will be using the Flip platform. During

this lesson, we will discuss the differences between recording a video for our teacher and

classmates to view versus creating a fun silly video for fun. We will use the gradual release

method during this lesson, as many students have not created on Flipgrid before.

The final lesson will teach students how to use the information provided in a peer’s content to

respond to their discussion post or Flip video. This lesson will also focus on writing respectful,
constructive responses. We will look at a prompt with a few sample responses. We will also do

some error analysis on a post that could be improved. Students will suggest changes and work

with a partner to construct a new response using the sentence starters we reviewed in lessons 1

and 3.

Instructional Strategies: During this unit, I will be using a lot of modeling to show students

what they are expected to do and the language they are expected to use. I also plan on using error

analysis to allow student the opportunity to correct discussion posts that do not meet the

expectations. Visual aids will be presented to aid and remind students of the online features and

sentence starters for their discussions. I have selected 3 videos that will serve as introduction

hooks for the lessons, discussion skills such as netiquette, online discussion boards, and

respectful communication. Students are going to be responding to the prompts using the RACE

strategy to guide their thoughts. Students at this school have been learning the RACE strategy

since 2nd grade and should be familiar. Students who need support will be able to use the visual

aids that were already posted in this classroom.

Designing the Message: The message of this unit is to promote respectful online communication

between classmates for academic prompts. I am going to share this message with students

through instructional PowerPoints with examples and non-examples of how to respectfully

respond, and a few instructional videos that promote the unit message. I am going to provide

students with multiple sentence starters and resources to ensure that they understand the impacts

of their online communication.

Development of Instruction: Instructional Materials are going to be developed and presented in

a sequence, with each lesson building upon the one before it. The first lesson is going to be

developed with modeling being used as the primary instructional method. If students respond
well to the instruction, I plan on using a similar method for the remaining lessons. If students

need differentiation, I plan to adapt the instruction by a gradual release method: I do, We do,

You do. This will help students who are not familiar with the application or language that they

should use when responding to classroom discussion boards.

Evaluation Instruments: I am going to have students submit their discussion posts and videos. I

am going to evaluate their success by determining if they were able to create their post to

respond to the topic. I am going to evaluate their 3rd goal by determining if their response to their

classmate’s post addressed the content of their post and they responded in a respectful way that

provided constructive feedback or further thoughts to add to the original post. While the first two

assessments are consistent for each student, the final lesson’s assessment can be differentiated

for each learner. They are able to select the application (CTLS or Flipgrid), which will allow

them to type or record their response. They will also have the opportunity to select what post

they are going to respond to. While all of the unit assessments are going to be completed using

the applications that were introduced and presented on during the lessons, additional, formative

evaluation will take place during the whole group lessons in the form of class discussions, error

analysis activities, and think-pair-share activities.

Instructional Materials:

For each lesson, I have designed an instructional PowerPoint to guide the unit. Each

PowerPoint is going to include picture visual to teach students how to use the online discussion

boards. The slides are also going to have sentence starters, examples, and non-examples of

respectful discussion posts. I prepared these PowerPoint to serve as visuals to reference during
the whole group lessons, but I have also made these available for students to access after the

lesson for students who are visual learners and would like to follow the visual examples as they

work to create their own discussion posts. I am also going to introduce the lessons with a few

online videos, one about netiquette and one about being respectful. These videos are going to be

great introductory activities that will allow up to discuss the importance of the information that

we post online for other’s to view.

The unit is housed on Waklet, an accessible curation source for 3rd graders. Having all

sources available on Waklet allow for students to see a preview of each resource and they can

easily select and view the resource they are looking for. These resources are going to be rest for

students who need to trouble shoot, since some have step-by-step directions. The instruction

materials available for students on the Waklet include:

1. Lesson #1 PDF

2. Lesson #2 PDF

3. Lesson #3 PDF

4. Netiquette Introduction Video

5. Respectfulness Introduction Video

6. Link to Flipgrid

7. Flipgid How-to Page

8. Image with Discussion Post sentence Starters

9. Online Discussion Board Etiquette Video

You can access the instructional materials for the unit here: https://wakelet.com/wake/K6U-

N0U6V1CoeGECYjDrS
Learner Data Analysis: Each student could have received a total of 3 points, one point from the

assignment required during each of the 3 lessons.

Assessment One: The student will write a response to a CTLS discussion post sharing their

opinion to the prompt.

Assessment Two: Students will create a Flipgrid video sharing their opinion to a prompt.

Assessment Three: Students will respond to a classmate’s CTLS or Flipgrid post by writing a

response that addresses the content of their post and shares their opinion of their response.

Learner Responded to Responded to Responded to Total Score

Number CLTS Discussion Flipgrid Topic Classmate from all 3

Prompt Discussion Post or Lessons

Video

1 1 1 1 3

2 1 1 1 3

3 0 1 1 2

4 1 1 1 3

5 1 1 0 2

6 1 1 1 3

7 1 1 1 3

8 1 1 1 3

9 1 1 1 3

10 0 1 0 1
 11 1 1 1 3

12 1 1 1 3

13 1 1 1 3

14 1 0 0 1

15 0 1 1 2

16 1 1 1 3

17 1 1 1 3

18 1 1 1 3

19 0 1 1 2

The students in Mrs. Wilson’s class did a great job with this unit. They were engaged in

learning and enjoyed learning how to utilize some online application that they have not had an

opportunity to explore yet. Students were very responsive to the responsibility that comes with

being respectful when responding to others online and seemed to understand that peers will be

reading and responding to what they post online. I think that students benefitted from the

discussions about respectful responses that took place during the final lesson. Many students

scored the maximum score across all 3 lessons, earning 3 points for the CLTS post, their Flipgrid

video, and their response to a classmate’s post. There are a few students who have a hard time

with organizing their thoughts for an online typing activity, and lost points for lesson one. These

students simply stated an answer but could not provide reasons to share with their classmates,

which would give their peers a hard time to formulate a response to their post. A few students

also had a hard time with responding to a classmate’s discussion post. Where these students

seemed to struggle was with recognizing what a classmate had said and formulating a response
that addressed what they said. They could not say if they agreed or disagreed with a post, and

instead just provided their own opinion, which would have been more appropriate for the first

two assessments, but not the third. I recommended that Mrs. Wilson continue to support those

skills in her classroom instruction, as many students enjoyed the activities and would benefit

from continuing the instruction. A few additional lessons or resources that would review the

goals of lesson #3 would benefit all students.