Cover lesson · PSE / Well-being · Year 8 · Beginner

Digital poster design: online safety

DCF: Producing → Creating digital content

Name: Class: Date:

Cover teacher — you need no subject knowledge

Print: this sheet, one per pupil. Nothing else is needed. Computers are useful for step 4 but the lesson works entirely on paper — the planning and the thumbnail are the assessed parts, and a hand-drawn final poster is perfectly acceptable.

Run: 4 min — read the brief box aloud · 6 min — pupils choose one topic and write the headline (this is the hardest bit; push them past “Be Safe Online”) · 10 min — complete the planning table · 8 min — draw the thumbnail layout · 17 min — build the poster in a slide, a document or on paper · 5 min — swap with a partner and complete the checking box on their sheet.

Collect: this sheet and the poster. If the poster is on a computer, pupils save it into their class folder and write the filename in the box at the bottom. Nothing is posted anywhere online.

The brief

Client: the local primary school. Audience: pupils aged 7 to 11 (Key Stage 2). Format: one page, A4 portrait, to be printed and pinned up in a corridor and read from about two metres away.

Choose exactly one topic:

Your poster must contain: a headline of six words or fewer; three pieces of advice, each a short instruction; one clear call to action (for example “Tell a trusted adult”); and strong contrast between text and background so it can be read from two metres away.

You may not use: words a seven-year-old would not know (“credentials”, “authentication”, “perpetrator”), images you have not got permission to use, or more than three colours plus black and white.

What you are doing

You are designing one printed poster for children several years younger than you. Almost everything that makes this hard is about them, not you: their reading age, their eyesight from two metres away, and the fact that they will look at it for about four seconds on the way to lunch.

Step by step

  1. 6 min — Choose your topic. Write three possible headlines, then circle the best one. Six words maximum.
  2. 10 min — Complete the planning table. Write your advice as instructions beginning with a verb.
  3. 8 min — Draw your layout in the thumbnail frame. Boxes and squiggles for text are fine — you are planning positions and sizes, not lettering.
  4. 17 min — Build the poster, on a computer or on paper.
  5. 5 min — Swap. Your partner stands two metres away and fills in the checking box. Fix whatever they could not read.

Three possible headlines

Planning table

My topic
My headline (six words or fewer)
Advice 1 (start with a verb)
Advice 2
Advice 3
Call to action
My three colours, and which is the background
One word I have deliberately avoided because it is too hard

Thumbnail layout

Sketch the whole page. Show where the headline sits, how big it is compared with the advice, where the picture goes and where the call to action goes. Label each block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Partner checking box — stand two metres away

Check Yes / No What to fix
I could read the headline from two metres
I could read the three pieces of advice
Every word would be understood by a seven-year-old
The call to action is obvious without being told
Text and background are clearly different in darkness, not just in colour

Where my finished poster is saved (filename and folder), or “on paper”:

Success criteria

If you finish early