This unit of instruction, suggested for grades 3, 4 and 5 age-appropriately examines the concepts of intellectual property on the Internet and the rights that copyright provide for creative material. The foundational theme is that just as the American Constitution has a Bill or Rights for citizens in the physical world, there is a basic set of rights extended to every cyber citizen. Among those, cyber citizens of all ages have rights such as the right to privacy, free speech, and to protect what they own online. Integrated activities enable students to understand that their own work has value and should be respected by others. To reinforce concepts, students learn to make the copyright symbol and put their notice of copyright on a creative project. Additionally, empowerment activities promote ways for students to age-appropriately develop creative projects that demonstrate what they have learned to others.

This material is suitable to integrate into a variety of traditional elementary school subject matter including computer/technology, social studies (study of citizenship and/or community), music, or library/media (study of digital citizenship) classes. The curriculum provides educators with a variety of options and modes to adequately address the diversity of learning styles found in these grade levels. The unit is comprised of:

• unit introduction and programmatic instructions
• grade-specific lesson plans for each of the grades 3, 4 and 5
• additional lessons and activity plans, including a peer-to-peer project for each grade, to age-appropriately introduce and reinforce the concepts of ownership and copyright, while promoting creativity
• age-appropriate reproducible reference and activity pages
• a short, age-appropriate review PowerPoint lesson with teacher’s guide: “Copyright is KEWL,” to provide a visually-oriented option for covering key concepts of how to show copyright

The development of this curriculum is the result of an i-SAFE / ASCAP Foundation partnership.

The Creativity in the Classroom: Creative Ownership and Copyright curriculum is a part of the i-SAFE Intellectual Property curriculum for grades 3, 4 and 5. It is provided to i-SAFE trained educators of 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who fill out an online Implementation Plan.

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