Lesson focus

  • Respect
  • Responsibility

Expectations and goals

  • Students to understand the need for values in our community
  • Students to discuss how and why social media has changed the community’s views on values

Learning experiences

Classroom Ideas

  1. Introduce the lesson by explaining that the values and concerns we have affect our thoughts and actions towards others and ourselves. Values and concerns influence things in our society such as laws, human rights and government policies.
    Pose the question, “What is a social value?” and invite students to respond. Explain that social values are those that enable individuals to improve their social relations, enhance the understanding of the social set up, and build on one’s competence.
    Pose the question, “What social values and concerns are important in our community?” and invite students to discuss as a class.
  2. Facilitate a class discussion on the Important values survey (Resource 8 below) that the students
    completed at home. The purpose of the discussion is to ascertain whether the class thinks the values
    are of concern in our community today.
    Place the Important values survey on the interactive whiteboard and tally all the answers.
    Discuss the results with the class. Ask the students questions such as:

    1. How do your parents/caregivers values compare to yours? Would they be the same if you asked your grandparents?
    2. Why would they differ or be the same?
    3. What is the most important value in our community, based on our survey?
    4. How does this link to Crime Stoppers? (We protect what we value)
  3. Ask students to research how Australia’s social values compare to other countries in the world.
    Pose the following questions to the students:

    1. Why would they differ?
    2. If you agree with a country’s social values, does it make you want to visit it?
    3. Would you avoid a country that had different views to you? Organise the class into pairs or small groups. Ask each group to select a social value and discuss why this value is important. Ask them to consider Crime Stoppers and its message in their discussion. Think about how their chosen social value affects society now, how it may change in the future, how it was in the past. Ask students to promote the characteristics and the explanation of the social value’s importance as a role play, ICT presentation, poster, comic strip or speech.
  4. Has social media played a part in changing our social values? Ask the students to list the types of social media they use.
    Pose the following questions and discuss as a whole class:

    1. Was social media used by their parents when they were their age?
    2. How has this affected us today?Write two columns on board, one labelled ‘Past’ the other labelled ‘Present’. List the types of social media used in each appropriate column. Pose further questions to the class and discuss.
    3. What has changed?
    4. Now with the internet has our national security been compromised?
    5. What are the positive effects that social media has had on our social values?
    6. What is the negative effect?
    7. Since Crime Stoppers now uses social media, how could they have communicated its message before social media? Would this have been as effective?
  5. Ask students to select a social value which they feel is most important to their school community.
    Ask them to write a letter to their school principal explaining what it is, why it is important, how it
    links to education and how this can be withheld in the future.
  6.  In small groups ask students to discuss and record, “How can one person help create a safer
    society? Does doing this mean that you have to endanger yourself?”
  7. Call on the groups to report back to the class (provide discussion time within the group).
  8. Conduct a community circle that invites all students to suggest one way that an individual can
    help improve society that does not involve endangering themselves.

Focus questions

  1. What are social values and what do they mean to us?
  2. Has social media played a part in changing our views?
  3. Do the world’s social values affect Australia’s values?
  4.  If you agree with a country’s social values, does it make you want to visit it?
  5. Would you avoid a country that had different views to you?
  6. How do your parents values compare to yours? Would they be the same if you asked your grandparents?
  7. Why would they differ/be the same?
  8. Was social media used by your parents when they were your age?
  9. How has social media affected us today?
  10. What has changed?
  11. Now with the internet has our national security been compromised?
  12. What are the positive effects that social media has had on our social values?
  13. What is the negative effect of social media?
  14. Since Crime Stoppers now uses social media, how could it have communicated its message before social media? Would this have been as effective?

Assessment tasks

Students to:

  1. Create an advertisement (eg ICT, Multimodal, poster, pamphlet) that best displays their chosen social value and what it means to them.

Download/View resources and tools

Printable lesson plan (Download Year 8, Lesson 3 plan)

Resource 8: Important values survey [Download Resource 8]

Additional resources: Values Education for Australian Schooling website