Year 6 HPE Unit of Work

Navigating Respect, Safety and Connection Online: A Year 6 Digital Wellbeing Unit

Help your Year 6 students navigate more complex relationships, friendships and online situations with respect, resilience and responsibility as they approach the transition to high school.

Navigating Respect, Safety and Connection Online is an 8 week, ready to teach unit that meets students where they are: more independent online, spending more time in games, apps and group chats with less adult supervision, and increasingly exposed to feeds, algorithms and comparison with friends’ online lives. It builds directly on the Year 5 unit, Building Bridges, revisiting the same big ideas through genuinely new, more complex content, including a deeper look at how comparison culture and curated content can affect friendships and self perception. Every lesson follows a consistent structure, so any classroom teacher can prepare and deliver it with minimal additional planning.

The learning sequence:

Part 1: Understanding my relationships
1. My Rights and Responsibilities (rights, responsibilities and respectful relationships)
2. Friendships Change, and That’s Okay (managing change in relationships respectfully)

Part 2: Managing relationships safely
3. Resolving Conflict, Respectfully (a structured five step conflict resolution process)
4. Spotting Red Flags (recognising discrimination, coercion and upstander responses)

Part 3: Understanding my online world
5. My Community Web and the Comparison Trap (media literacy, comparison culture and real connection)
6. Reading the Warning Signs (recognising unsafe situations and support networks)
7. My Voice, My Choice (assertive communication and consent online)

Part 4: Putting it into action
8. The Safer Communities Campaign (a group campaign and audience pitch)

What’s included:

• Full teacher lesson plans with learning intentions, success criteria, explicit teaching notes, common misconceptions and formative assessment guidance for every lesson
• A complete set of printable resources: My Friendship Charter, Rights and Responsibilities sorting cards, Friendship Journey Map, Conflict Resolution Pathway worksheet and scenario cards, Red Flag Radar and scenario cards, My Community and How I Belong worksheet, Safety Signal Check and case study cards, My Voice My Choice speech bubble template, Campaign Planner and Topic cards, and a Final Self Assessment slip
• A unit assessment rubric and a dedicated campaign assessment rubric (Emerging, Achieving, Going Beyond), mapped to every outcome and curriculum code
• A teacher appendix with an outcomes at a glance table, additional teaching notes and extension ideas
• A parent/carer communication template and week by week family discussion prompts
• Curated links to Australian, evidence based further support (eSafety Commissioner, Kids Helpline, Bullying. No Way!)

Why teachers choose it:
No prep, no guesswork, and no fear based messaging; just a warm, trauma informed, strengths focused program that deepens naturally from Year 5 rather than covering the same ground twice. Every activity builds toward students genuinely internalising that respectful relationships involve both rights and responsibilities, that comparison culture doesn’t reflect real connection, and that they have the voice, judgement and support network to navigate friendships and online spaces safely, right as they head into high school.