Te ao tangata | social sciences learning area was the first to be made available as part of Te Mātaiaho | the refreshed New Zealand curriculum.
The new Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories (ANZH) content was released in 2022 and is part of the refreshed social sciences learning area.
Find out more about how we created Te Takanga o Te Wā and Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories content.
Schools and kura were required to implement the ANZH content at the beginning of 2023, but have until the beginning of 2027 before the rest of the refreshed curriculum must be used.
The Ministry engaged widely with the education sector, ākonga, whānau, iwi and communities. Read our feedback reports here.
The New Zealand Curriculum Refresh
Social Sciences
(Transcript)
We open on a blue graphic with the headline in white reading ‘The New Zealand Curriculum Refresh Social Sciences. The Ministry of Education logo in white is positioned centre top of the graphic. Soft acoustic guitar music in the background.
The graphic transitions to show Bronwyn Houliston sitting at a wooden table. She is wearing a sleeveless black dress, and is wearing a silver necklace and silver round earrings. Behind her is large widows looking outside to some greenery. Against the window is an installed wooden working bench across it’s width with a few wooden stools.
At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with white text “Bronwyn Houliston, Deputy Principal Curriculum, Marist College ”.
This refresh is really going to bring it to the fore how important the Social Sciences are for developing critical and informed citizens and students in our classroom.
We now transition to another clip showing Teresa Topp sitting in a library and speaking to the camera. The library has blue walls and bookshelves holding books in the background. She is wearing a sleeveless black dress, is wearing green pounamu necklace and large round earrings. She has a tattoo on her right upper arm.
At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with white text “Teresa Topp, Principal Waikite Valley School”.
It is ensuring that our children are empathetic, understanding, respectful citizens who can engage in a bicultural and multicultural community.
We now transition to a clip showing Hīria Wallace sitting in a dining room in a house talking to the camera. She is wearing an orange dress with purple flower motifs. Behind her we see a lounge, with a couch, bookshelf with indistinct ornaments. At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with white text “Hīria Wallace, Kaitakawaenga/PLD Consultant Whakatāne”.
It allows us to design a curriculum that is real for our students and their community.
We now transition to a clip showing Mike Clyne sitting in an empty classroom talking to the camera. He is wearing a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up. Behind him we see empty school desks and blue chairs, with a whiteboard in the far background. At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with white text “Mike Clyne, Assistant Principal Edgewater College”.
It helps you understand the world that you live in, and better prepares you for the world that you are going to inherit.
We transition to a graphic with a blue background showing the ‘Understand, Know, Do’ infographic.
We now transition to back to Hīria Wallace talking to camera.
The Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum prior to this, the Social Sciences refresh, came up with the design of the ‘Understand, Know, Do’.
A graphic with white background appears showing the ‘Understand, Know, Do’ infographic.
So when we began to put together the curriculum, we looked at that as a model and saw that it fitted quite nicely too with our contexts and the things that we wanted to include and deliver.
A green graphic appears with the text in White “Aotearoa New Zealand Histories within Social Sciences”
We transition to 3 people sitting in a library on orange chairs. Two women with a man in the middle. The woman sitting on the right, Cat Lunjevich, is speaking to camera first. She is wearing a black dress with white patterns and a blue blazer. At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with the text in white “Cat Lunjevich, Social Sciences lead writer Ministry of Education”.
So Aotearoa Histories fits into social sciences in a couple of ways. There’s really close connections and the ‘Understand’ statements, some of those who have transitioned over directly as they were in Aotearoa New Zealand Histories. What's really exciting about that connection is that it's really important in social science that we understand our past so we can make sense of the present, and it helps us inform our decisions now and in the future. So there is a really natural fit with Aotearoa New Zealand Histories and the social science. Within the ‘Know’ statements, when we drafted the content for social science, we made sure that our social science statements had a really clear connection to the content that was in Aotearoa New Zealand Histories. So if you started with the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories ‘Know’ statement, that there was a clear relationship after the social sciences.
The camera pans to the second woman, Bronwyn Wood. She is wearing an orange jersey with a pink and white patterned scarf. At the bottom of the screen a turquoise graphic appears with the text in white “Bronwyn Wood, Associate Professor School of Education, Victoria University”.
So in many ways as we look to integrate these two curriculum, which had been developed initially separately, we used the conceptual ideas of social sciences in order to kind of position the more specific content of the Histories curriculum. So that, that was a way which we found that wouldn't overload the teachers too much by providing them away into use their Histories in as many ways, as case studies and examples of the big conceptual threads which the social sciences hold together.
We transition to an orange graphic slide with the text in white “Progress outcomes”.
We transition back to Cat Lunjevich talking to camera.
One of the things that has excited and surprised me the most through this writing process has been the potential that sits within the progress outcomes. So a progress outcome as the ‘Understand’, ‘Know’, ‘Do’ that sits at each phase of learning across your time and schooling. What surprised me about the progress outcome is the way that they are described, mean that the learning that is described at each phase of learning sets really high expectations for our young people are to experience in their learning education. The way that they are shaped, enable room for what matters locally to come into play. For me it feels like the progress outcome really put the learner in the heart of the learning experience and is described in a way that that can't be left to chance.
We transition back to Bronwyn Houliston talking to camera.
There is so much change going on in education at the moment and at times I think it can feel a little overwhelming. But the good thing about this refresh in the social sciences content, is that a lot of it will look familiar. It will be reminiscent of some of the achieving objectives you've already been working with. And I know that as we've worked through the refresh, I've thought about my programmes at Saint Mary's, I thought about what we're teaching at the moment, and I can see a lot of places where what we're doing fits with the refresh and also a lot of places where the refresh is really going to enrich the learning that we're doing in our classrooms.
We transition back to Hīria Wallace talking to camera.
We have an opportunity to work with iwi and hapū, and consult with them on what they would like their students to know there, to understand and knowledge that is very important for our future, so that we also retain our culture, our history, our knowledge.
We transition back to Mike Clyne talking to camera.
And that is one of our jobs is always to make sure that our students are prepared for the outside world, and I think that through the refresh, and through this new framework, I think it potentially has the better ability to facilitate that.
We transition back to Teresa Topp talking to camera.
It's an empowering future for the ākonga, and if delivered well, they will come out feeling really hopeful and really impassioned about improving citizenship and the social status of New Zealand.
We transition to an orange slide with the white text “The Refresh of The New Zealand Curriculum”. The “Ministry of Education Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga” logo is at the top centre of the graphic in black, and the “curriculumrefresh.education.govt.nz” url in black font at the bottom centre.
Guide for getting started
The guide for getting started will help you:
- learn about the key changes to te ao tangata | social sciences
- find starting points to explore and use the refreshed curriculum content
- connect to resources (including videos on this page), support, and PLD.
Progression in Action
The Progression in Action guidance supports you to notice the cumulative depth and breadth from one Progress Outcome to the next to help you design rich learning opportunities.
By viewing them as a complete set, you can see progression across the phases of the learner pathway to ensure consistent expectations in your programme planning.
Planning
The planning guide, templates, and examples support you to develop your te ao tangata | social sciences programme or individual units. They link the whakapapa of Te Mātaiaho to the planning process.
Learning area content cards
School leaders and kaiako can use the cards to plan a social sciences programme. (We recommend you print these single-sided.)
Video example of kahui ako participating in a planning session with curriculum content cards
Learning in Action Videos
These videos show teachers actively trialling elements of the new te ao tangata | social sciences curriculum content in their schools.
Watch them discuss their planning processes and a range of teaching strategies and learning activities as they start to bring the new curriculum content to life.
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 1-3, Video 1: Decision making and planning, and connections with whānau, hapū, and iwi
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
In 2021, we as a school, piloted Aotearoa New Zealand's histories, that was in term one. Then we continued to unpack the histories throughout 2021 and into 2022. So this year, when we've picked up the social science document to start planning for our inquiry for term one, there's a direct link between the Aotearoa New Zealand's histories document and the social sciences document. So for us, it was quite easy to then use the social science document to plan for our inquiry.
[Mātaioho | School curriculum design
Notice how kaiako:
- Plan collaboratively
- Build on what is already going on in the local curriculum, draw on stories from communities, iwi, and hapū in the rohe
- Plan inclusively and design learning experiences that meet the needs of all ākonga
- Draw on the purpose statement and important considerations to create rich learning inquiries
- Use inquiry to select a meaningful topic designs to deepen ākonga understanding of the big ideas]
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
As a leadership team, we came up with a big idea that would last us the whole year and it was about change. So in the beginning we're doing social sciences, but that same big idea is going to take us through the sciences and the arts for our inquiries throughout the year. As a school, we've had a couple of children who have had preventable house fires at home last year.In the junior school, we've decided to pick up Firewise as a topic, but we don't have time to just teach it as a topic. So straight away, when we're looking at inquiry, I looked at the social sciences document and started to look for connections where I could connect Firewise to what is in the social science document. We linked Firewise into the big overarching idea of that people participate in communities and that their roles and beliefs that they have inform how they behave in our communities. In the Know part of the social sciences document, there is a part about organisation and sovereignty and that links again into how people behave in a community, which again for us, we could link it into our Firewise unit. So for anyone that's doing this, always look for links between things that are happening in your community that you want to address and the curriculum document. It makes inquiry quite meaningful to the children and it means that you can fit more in rather than teaching in isolation.
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
As a team, we talked about how could we integrate our learning, making it a rich learning context for our students. We looked at what is it do our students need to understand? What would make the most significant impact for them?
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
When we're planning for our inquiry to make sure that we meet the needs of all the children in our class, we also take into consideration that in our junior school, a lot of our children respond better to a lot of hands-on activities. When we first started our unit, instead of just showing pictures of things, our whole team had burnt pieces of paper that we passed around, that our children could smell, they could feel it, and then they started to wonder, what had happened to it, which I think is an example of meeting the needs of the children in front of us rather than just showing them a picture of something that was burnt, maybe a house or something like that. We delivered it in a way that would best meet our students' needs.
[Mātaiahikā | Connecting to place and community
Notice how kaiako:
- Recognise the expertise within their team
- Invite the community to share their expertise enabling the exploration of multiple perspectives held by people or groups
- Connect ākonga culture into the learning
- Build on existing relationships]
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
We're really lucky here to have a really diverse staff and also a really diverse community. We know the cultures of all of our children in our classes and we know where we can shoulder tap and make connections to people in our community who can come in and support what we're doing from their worldview.
Kim Mullaney, Year 1-2 Teacher — Waipukurau School
We're also very fortunate that right on our doorstep we've got Pukekaihau, which was a Pā site, so we do regular excursions, hikois, up to Pukekaihau. Where the Pā site was, there's now actually got Hunter Park Kindergarten on that. So in our walks up there, we're not only linking to tangata whenua and opening discussion on that, but also lots of our tamariki actually attended Hunter Park Kindergarten. So they are able then to revisit, share their experience with us from their time there.
[Mātairea | Support progress
Notice how kaiako:
- Connect learning with te ao Māori
- Weave aspects of the progress outcomes — engage with appropriate Know statements and Do practices, drawing on Aotearoa New Zealand Histories]
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
As a school, every single inquiry topic that we teach is taught through Te Ao Māori at some part of it, and that is always linked back to New Zealand history. And the fact that we do that allows us to have more time, I think, to reach those progress outcomes.
[Special thanks to Te Papapa School & Waipukurau School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 1-3, Video 2: Understand, Know, Do, and the Progress Outcomes
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
We are still at the very beginning of our inquiry and our inquiry statement for the term is I'm rangatira, I'm a leader. We wanted our students to understand that everybody participates in the community, they bring in their beliefs and they have roles within our community. So we wanted our students to have a voice. So that led us to the Know. What is it that they needed to know to understand the big idea?
[Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako:
- Weave Understand, Know, and Do together
- Provide rich and varied learning activities which connect to the meaningful topic
- Create opportunities for ākonga to have agency, building their key competencies via the Do practices]
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
We want them to know that communities have rules that organises communities but unfortunately the rules that we make and the decisions that we make won't always be for everybody. So we first started looking at the treaty and weaving in rangatira from the past, the big decisions they had to make about signing the treaty. We looked at those who agreed to sign and those who didn't agree to sign. Why did they make those decisions? What was the impact of those decisions from the past? That led us to choosing our Do. So we wanted our students to be able to ask rich questions, think about the different perspectives and think about the past critically. Our Do at the end we want to have a mini election that the children are electing their own leaders.
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
We chose to do our Firewise unit, it was based on what was happening in our community at the time. So under the big idea that people participate in communities through the roles they hold and the beliefs they have, we were looking at making explicit connections for our children in the junior school between how a fire is started now and how in the story of Mahuika and Maui where fire came from and how fires were started then. When I was deciding on the Do's I looked through what was achievable at five years old for children who have just come into school and decided that the Do around asking open ended questions was the first thing I would do. Our second Do that we focused on was thinking critically about the past and one of the indicators to meet that outcome is that children can retell a story.
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
A rich learning activity for our children would be one that is integrated across the curriculum that would help understand the big idea. For example, we did a STEM activity where each child had a chance to take part as being the leader and give the instructions and that led to a lot of rich discussion of misconceptions of what a leader was.
[Responding to the practices woven through Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako
- Embed the Do practices and effectively weave through the key competencies
- Respond to the literacy & communications practices inside te ao tangata | social sciences
- Build vocabulary specific to the learning
- Make simple connections with numeracy]
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
A lot of the key competencies are woven into the activities that we've chosen to do. One of the activities that we did to think critically about the past was looking at two of the rangatira, one that agreed to sign the treaty and one that disagreed and thinking about why did they make those decisions and the impact that it's still having on Māori people today. We are also using writing to unpack those Do's within the curriculum. We are currently working on persuasive writing to help
our students convince the other students within our team to vote for them for our mini election.
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
Also, as part of our literacy, we do things like unpacking vocab from our picture books that we've found that relate to our inquiry. So you feed that vocab in, you unpack it in the story and then you use it in your writing. For maths, we've integrated it through our word problems. The context of them relates to our inquiry.
[Notice, recognise, and respond to the progress using Progress Outcomes
Notice how kaiako:
- Notice, recognise, and respond to ākonga learning
- Design flexible assessment approaches, responding to opportunities for assessment as they arise throughout the learning]
Anna Sizer, Manuka Team Leader Year 2 — Te Papapa School
So at the moment, we're still finding out how we're going to be assessing our children in the Do, but currently we're trying to do it through integration of our curriculum.
Kydene Sinclair, Kowhai Team Leader Year 1-3 — Te Papapa School
For us, to ensure that we're meeting those outcomes of the Do's over the term. When we're teaching our inquiry, you always have to be referring back to those Do's. So the part about answering open ended questions, that's not going to happen at the end of your inquiry, every day, every week, you have to be looking at what's happening in your class. Are your children able to answer those open ended questions? How are you going to scaffold them into that? How are you going to support them into that? And then we measure that through conversations we have. We record the children's wonderings. We also measure it through writing. So if we have a writing prompt that's based around the inquiry, how are you able to respond to that? The Do of thinking critically is a little bit trickier to measure, I think, but you're building up to that throughout the inquiry. And then at the end, your outcome should be that your children will be able to retell the story and that they will be able to compare it and talk about how other people may have different versions of the story or may have different beliefs to what was in the story that they have learnt.
[Special thanks to Te Papapa School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 4-6, Video 1: Decision making and planning, and connections with whānau, hapū, and iwi
Jo Lunn, Year 4-6 Poutama — Riverdale School
We've spent the last couple of years looking at New Zealand Aotearoa histories, and from there,
we've moved into the refreshed social sciences curriculum. And we really looked at making connections between the old curriculum, like what used to be the achievement objectives and things like that with the new curriculum.
[Mātaioho | School curriculum design
Notice how kaiako:
- Design their school curriculum based on ākonga needs
- Plan collaboratively and draw on teacher strengths to grow team capability
- Plan inclusively from the outset
- Draw on the purpose statement and important considerations to create rich learning inquiries
- Use inquiry to select a meaningful topic designed to deepen ākonga understanding of the big ideas]
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
The planning process starts off with the leadership team looking at the areas of the curriculum that need to be covered as a school, maybe looking at those learning progressions and the spiral of learning, where to next, what our staff needs to develop their understanding of. Beyond that, it moves into a team level. So we work in collaborative teaching teams, and within those teams, we look at who holds the different strengths in the different areas so that our curriculum can really be delivered at a level of depth that we want for our ākonga within the class. We might need to go to our local Rangitāne iwi, go to our whānau and communicate and develop some further understanding with them to help add richness and depth to the programme that we're teaching or the inquiry that we're running.
Aimee Davis, Year 3-4 Team Leader — Waipukurau School
At Waipukurau school, we're on a journey of creating a conceptual plan within our school.
It is very much at the draft stages and reflects the refresher social sciences curriculum. And we have used it as a bit of a guidance to start developing big ideas within our school, branching out across the four terms each year within four components of Me , the community, New Zealand and the world. And each year, we will change the concept in which we will be covering. So this year, for instance, in term one with Me, we will be looking at belonging. We've looked at the key competencies within the curriculum document and align those with our values within our school, within our conceptual plan, they will become an integral part of our planning. They will guide what we do and how we do it.
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
So we also have a staff member who is our Te Ao Māori lead at school, and her job really
is to ensure that that lens around Te Ao Māori and te reo Māori and tikanga is strong throughout the school. She makes sure that protocol is in place, that the staff is competent and capable and able to deliver the curriculum the way that it should be delivered.
Jo Lunn, Year 4-6 Poutama — Riverdale School
Our SENCO creates a tier doc that identifies the students with diverse needs. When we're planning, we take the needs of those students into consideration, so if there's any barriers to learning, a little team can actually overcome those.
[ Mātaiahikā | Connecting to place and community
Notice how kaiako:
- Invite the community to share their expertise
- Connect ākonga culture into learning
- Connect with local iwi]
Aimee Davis, Year 3-4 Team Leader — Waipukurau School
A key component to our planning is the people, the places and the stories. This was highlighted through our whānau hui, that these were really important things for us to cover within our planning. From there, we have sat down as a staff and we have looked at who are these key people within our community and what roles they have to play and how we can share those stories with our children within the teaching scope. Our local Māori lit advisors have been a key component to our planning. They have really guided what we have done. We here in Waipukurau School have four contributing marae. So it was really important that we have a really big idea about what was important for our collective community.
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
At Riverdale one of the things we do is we have a Te Ao Māori focus group and this is a group of parents that are interested in supporting us on this journey. And I think that's quite important. They come in to support us on a lot of the major decisions we make as a school when we just need a little bit more of a local lens, put on that and have some confidence supported from the community. Another really important thing that we prioritise here as a school is that connection with Rangitāne, our local iwi. Pā Jack is a tohunga, so he is our school amorangi and he is a tohunga within the Rangitāne Iwi. It's such a blessing to have his knowledge, and I don't think there's ever a question a child's fired at him that he can't give an answer to. We have a staff member whose job it is to make connections with our multicultural community. She works alongside our ESOL families in particular, to help make sure that their experiences are reflected in what's happening and that their children feel valued and that their culture that they're bringing in feels valued, their language is valued, and that the communication between the school and home is clear.
[Special thanks to Waipukurau School & Riverdale School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 4-6, Video 2: Understand, Know, Do, and the Progress Outcomes
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
For our inquiry we started off looking at the curriculum and trying to see areas that we maybe hadn't covered as much. And then all of a sudden the cyclone happened and that's when we knew that we needed to kind of take a shift and respond to our children and respond to what was happening in our community.
[Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako:
- Respond to local issues to clarify enduring societal issues
- Weave Understand, Know, and Do together
- Draw on the purpose statement and important considerations to develop rich questions and a meaningful topic
- Make connections with ākonga knowledge and experiences]
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
We went back to the curriculum and grabbed some big ideas that would actually fit in with what we were doing. Then when we got to the knowledge part, we could find one, maybe two that we thought fit in and we thought, maybe actually this isn't going to work. So we touched base with our ministry coordinator and she came in and directed us into that Do portion where we could see that actually there was so much coverage within that area that we were really able to add depth, critical thinking skills through that Do questioning. There was a lot that could happen in that area and that next year when we come back to it or on the next round, we can then go back into maybe some of those areas that we weren't doing as much depth and just develop the cycle of learning in that way it didn't have to all be done within the one inquiry. It could be done over time and in different areas.
Jo Lunn, Year 4-6 Poutama — Riverdale School
Each kaiako designs a series of lessons to take for their explore. We make sure that the learning is deep and meaningful and we weave through the Understand, Know, Do. We rotate each whānau class through our series of lessons so everybody experiences the same thing.
Aimee Davis, Year 3-4 Team Leader — Waipukurau School
The overall context of our plan is people, places and stories. This is building on the Understand and developing the Know for our students. For me within my classroom, the introduction of this plan is about looking at students as a whole, who they are within the community, who are their people, looking at the stories of their history, their whakapapa and their histories with their whānau. When we look at the refresher document in regards to the Do, we're looking at how students can critically think about their environment and their people within their environment.
Jo Lunn, Year 4-6 Poutama — Riverdale School
We chose to ask rich questions and we also wanted the children to look at different perspectives and values that people hold.
Aimee Davis, Year 3-4 Team Leader — Waipukurau School
Within my planning, it's important that I know my students so that I can connect with my students in a way that reflects what they need and what they want to know. Ensuring that all my students have the opportunity for success.
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
How they share their learning with others looks different everywhere you go. So you'll see children working in the same space on the same big idea, but the way that they're doing that might look completely different and that's a lot of autonomy and voice and choice from the students.
[Responding to the practices woven through Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako:
- Respond to the Do practices that weave through the key competencies
- Respond to the literacy & communications practices inside the learning area
- Support ākonga to think critically, build vocabulary, and use numeracy in te ao tangata | social sciences activities]
Aimee Davis, Year 3-4 Team Leader — Waipukurau School
The curriculum key competencies are reflected within our school values. Bringing our school value system into our planning is really important, ensuring that students have context within what they're doing. So if we were looking at kindness and we are developing the idea of Me, it's looking at what students need to do to support themselves within their learning and how they can help others around them.
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
So a lot of that background knowledge is developed through our reading programmes and our literacy programmes. And from there, when we are having inquiry sessions, it's more about those critical thinking skills that planned action. Some of those more deep, rich thinking is able to come out because they have the knowledge to be able to form an opinion.
[Notice, recognise, and respond to progress using the Progress Outcomes
Notice how kaiako:
- Plan for ākonga to meet progress outcomes through a range of topics
- Are planning to make progress accessible to whānau]
Janine McIntyre, Year 4-6 Poutama Atawhai — Riverdale School
One of our next big steps is going to be looking at the progress outcomes and how we're
ensuring that children are moving through them, inspiring, and being challenged and lifted, instead of just on repeat the same thing year after year. We use a system to report to our parents. It is an ongoing reporting system. So that's our next step as a staff, really, to make sure that we are putting these progressions onto that and making it accessible to our community and reporting back to our community about how our children are moving through the progressions and achieving by the end of year six or by the end of year three what that looks like.
Jo Lunn, Year 4-6 Poutama — Riverdale School
The transition from the old curriculum to the refreshed one was actually quite seamless to be honest. Slightly new terminology, and the Understand, Know, Do is actually something we already do. It's just making sure that you're consciously covering those three things. And because of our learning process, they just fit naturally into there, they just weave into every stage of that.
[Special thanks to Waipukurau School & Riverdale School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 7-8, Video 1: Decision making and planning, and connections with whānau, hapū, and iwi
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
Last year we started to unpack social science and the histories, knowing that the two are very similar and that they're merged together.
[Mātaioho | School curriculum design
Notice how kaiako:
- Begin to explore ways to weave Understand, Know, and Do together through inquiry learning
- Select a meaningful topic and develop rich questions by drawing on the purpose statement and important considerations
- Plan collaboratively and draw on teacher strengths to grow team capability
- Respond to the literacy & communications and maths practices inside the Do statements]
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
So with Understand and Know, we unpacked it in our team meetings. We always brought rich tasks to our team meetings and we shared how we linked our Understand and Know and then after that we would try and look at some of the outcomes which was leading us to the Do part which we are trying to unpack this year. So we did it step by step so that each of the teachers would gain more content knowledge, but also that the kids understood the process. As we were planning our inquiry, we picked something that would link to the principles or the ideas around the treaty. This term we are doing economics, so how it shaped Aotearoa. From that we were able to plan out what our focus would be for literacy and numeracy across the curriculum.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
This year we have an overarching theme which is to know one's history is to know oneself. We have our Aoteaoroa New Zealand's histories curriculum leader and their focus is mainly collecting resources for the school and sort of have the bare bones planning. From there in staff meetings, we collaborate, we come up with ideas.
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
Rich tasks is a big thing at Te Papapa school and we plan for rich tasks usually in our team meetings or we will come together and support all the teachers. Usually the rich task involves a mixture of literacy, numeracy and a mixture of histories and social science. So when we are giving the students a rich task, we do assess across the curriculum.
[ Mātaiahikā | Connecting to place and community
Notice how kaiako:
- Give effect to Mātaiahikā by drawing on the important considerations in the purpose statement
- Connect with community experts to build knowledge
- Connect with local iwi to understand stories and tikanga]
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
A lot of the planning that our team did was around the topics that we did.We broke it down into how can we get connected with our local MPs, our local mātuas or just our whānau in general to help build the knowledge.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
This is my second year working for the Pukekohe Kāhui Ako as a cross school teacher for Aotearoa New Zealand's histories and we've been working really closely with mana whenua, with Ngāti Tamaoho. So our local marae is Ngā Hau e Whā, which is the four winds and meaning that we have people coming from different places to be here. In the past, we have done a lot of work around students working on their pepeha and talking to their family and making those connections and finding out where they're from. But with consultation with mana whenua, we're now taking a different approach and that is that we're working on whakawhanaungatanga and then if it's culturally appropriate for that student to work on their pepeha, then they do. Part of the work with Kāhui Ako is that having the PLD hours with mana whenua means that we are going to collectively as an area be tapping into those resources. Understandably, they're very, very cautious around how their stories are told. They've actually created an education plan and that education plan has been rolled out to schools within this community and the wider community because they have a number of schools within the area.
[Mātaitipu | Vision for young people
Notice how kaiako:
- Give effect to Mātaitipu by drawing on the important considerations and the purpose statement
- Awhi the diverse knowledge of ākonga and weave it into the learning]
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
We've made a lot of connections with the Treaty of Waitangi and that's something that's really important to us to start off with at the beginning of the year. So in order to help students understand the Treaty of Waitangi, we make connections to similar events in their own culture. Because we have a majority of those kids are Samoan or Tongan. That's how they understand it better.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
Most of our units are through inquiry, so tapping into students' own knowledge. An example of that is last year we had a student whose great grandfather was a market gardener in the area. So he interviewed his grandfather and recorded that.
Amelia Tu’itahi, Rimu Team Leader Year 4-8 — Te Papapa School
The students would come to school with their artifacts or they would come with stories and also their whānau would come in as well, just to share their experiences, but share what knowledge they have for our inquiry.
[Special thanks to Te Papapa School & Pukekohe Intermediate School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 7-8, Video 2: Understand, Know, Do, and the Progress Outcomes
Franics Paopao-Brown, Year 5-8 Teacher — Te Papapa School
Our big idea for social sciences is change and looking at how the interactions between people that were here and how new settlers have altered our economic environment that we're in.
[Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako:
- Link big ideas into specific contexts relevant to ākonga
- Use a variety of connected tasks to support learning and inquiry
- Use the progress outcomes to design rich learning experiences]
Franics Paopao-Brown, Year 5-8 Teacher — Te Papapa School
We really want the kids to identify the feelings that they have and the values and how they are in society, how they are in their own community at school and at home and in the classroom. Then we can look at the history and see how people have felt on both sides and just be empathetic to the way that they're feeling and then we can make a decision on whether it's right or wrong, on how that person felt at that time. So when we started, we used a level four text and it was based around being a kaitiaki. So the kids learned that in this civilization they either were by the sea or by the land. So those were the resources that they had to use. And then in a piece of writing they described how one civilization would meet another civilization and would begin that trading process without the use of language or money. We've basically looked at how Māori and the British would have exchanged using trade and we've introduced that to the kids as that was the most basic sort of economical environment that was known.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
We're quite fortunate in the school that we actually have the headstones from all the World War I soldiers who were past pupils of the school and they are at the front of our school. The idea of the unit is for our students to understand the soldiers that had made that sacrifice for us and that they were past pupils of the school and to just look a little bit deeper and make connections with who those people actually were. So our big ideas were around colonisation and settlement and people's lived experiences. This unit has given the students the opportunity to research, think critically, investigate, come up with their own conclusions, which is the Do component. The unit is linked through literacy using text for different purposes. So they're looking at a lot of records and old documents, newspaper articles, and then they're piecing everything together to build a picture around their soldier.
Maddie, Year 8 student — Pukekohe Intermediate School
I found a good website called Papers Past where I found all magazine clippings and stuff like that about him and online cenotaph. That's where all of his age and everything was. And my dad was in the military and he found a site and he got me all his medical records and his death certificate and will.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
So this unit is heavy text and literacy based, which can pose a challenge for some students. So there is a range of different sources that they could draw on. Once students had correlated all their information around their soldier, they could select how that was to be presented. And the idea was that it supported their learning needs. For some students that's orally they like to do a presentation. For others, it's in a storyboard or we had one student who was really keen for everybody to collect all their ideas together and create a book for the school.
[Notice, recognise, and respond to progress using the Progress Outcomes
Notice how kaiako:
- Are clear on what they are looking for when observing ākonga
- Design flexible supports and offer multiple ways to engage in learning
- Create inclusive assessment opportunities that provide multiple ways to show learning]
Franics Paopao-Brown, Year 5-8 Teacher — Te Papapa School
When we share the learning intention, we're kind of co constructing our success criteria together so there's just a range of opportunities for them to seek clarity or ask for help and to get the feedback they need.
Kelly Andrew, Lead Teacher Kāhui Ako Year 7-8 — Pukekohe Intermediate School
The success criteria was shared with the students from the outset and that was linked to the progress outcomes. The aim was to have students thinking critically, asking rich questions and analysing data.
Franics Paopao-Brown, Year 5-8 Teacher — Te Papapa School
Basically we're trying to teach the children that there are certain skills that they can have and there's sort of strategies and approaches they can have. When they come across a question, we'll do a lot of scaffolding and we will support them through it, giving feedback, working alongside them, having materials and then we'll give them a task and it'll be a worded problem and we might want them to have an ongoing investigation into that problem. It could take multiple sessions where they're drawing on all their resources, so looking in past modelling books in their own books, using resources online to support them. And then whilst they go through that process, we'll be formatively, assessing them, checking in, listening to what they're saying and then they would present at the end.
[Special thanks to Te Papapa School & Pukekohe Intermediate School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 9-10, Video 1: Decision making and planning, and connections with whānau, hapū, and iwi
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
We started our social sciences journey in about 2019. It was part of a review of our whole social sciences programme from a culturally responsive lens.
[Mātaioho | School curriculum design
Notice how kaiako:
- Plan collaboratively, guided by the important considerations
- Weave Understand, Know, Do — big ideas, contexts, and inquiry practices — locating these within a meaningful topic
- Integrate literacy and numeracy into learning via the DO practices
- Learn together — using expertise from kaiako, ākonga, and connect with whānau, hapū, iwi, and the broader communities]
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
We worked kind of together as a faculty to take stock of what we currently had in our programme, see what sort of fit in with the new curriculum and see where we maybe had gaps where we needed to get some more professional development for ourselves. And at the moment, in particular, our faculty is doing lots of professional learning, particularly looking forward to how we might assess the progressions in the curriculum. To gain an understanding of how the Understand, Know, Do framework operates, we spent a lot of time in our faculty using the curriculum planning cards for Aotearoa New Zealand's histories, but now that we've got the new social sciences curriculum, we're pulling those out again and using the new curriculum to sort of forward map what's still left to kind of be worked on and built in our programme. For us, the context of our school was really important in deciding what topics we chose to study. We're a Mercy school, which means we live by the Mercy values, and lots of those align with what we do in social sciences.
Julie Farrell, HOD Social Sciences — Trident High School
We looked at the different aspects of the curriculum and have started to look at the Understand, Know and Do and have started to implement that this year in the year nine and year ten programmes. So in our year nine class, our topic is Tūrangawaewae. We have got the big ideas or the understanding so that we can identify our learning intentions and the context of where we want to take that unit. So what we've done with the Do component of the curriculum is that we've woven the skills and also the knowledge component through our learning intentions and through our lesson plans. We have in our department a literacy expert and she's taken the role of the CoL literacy. And what we're trying to do this year is improve the writing skills, particularly through paragraphing for social studies. How we're going to assess that is using the e-asTTle framework.
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
So literacy has been a really big focus for us. We love the school journals, they've been such a fantastic resource. There are so many things in there that hit lots of the different Know contexts in the curriculum. Our assistant head of faculty, Penny Olsen, has a Kāhui Ako within school role, looking at literacy across the school. So she's really supported our faculty to bring literacy into what we're learning, particularly focusing on some of those Do practices of thinking conceptually and then being able to communicate understanding.
[ Mātaiahikā | Connecting to place and community
Notice how kaiako:
- Explore connections with whānau, hapū, and iwi
- Invite these communities to share their stories and expertise
- Integrate ākonga knowledge into learning and assessment]
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
Our school's in the early stages of building connections with local iwi and mana whenua. Part of this was actually for us looking into who has mana whenua status in this area. And we have about 14 different iwi groups with tribal authority in this area. And we recognise that it's important that this is a long term reciprocal school to iwi relationship, not just an individual, teacher or person.
Julie Farrell, HOD Social Sciences — Trident High School
For Trident High School, Ngāti Awa is our rohe. We have been very privileged to be taken around the rohe and look at areas of cultural significance for Ngāti Awa and this has allowed us as teachers to understand some of the significance and important aspects of issues for Ngāti Awa.
[Mātaitipu | Vision for young people
Notice how kaiako:
- Support ākonga to bring their own knowledge and experiences into the learning]
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
So as part of our culturally responsive review of our junior programmes, we gathered some student voice into what they felt was important to see in their learning and as part of that we've been able to draw on topics that are important to them.
Julie Farrell, HOD Social Sciences — Trident High School
Some of the students come to us from full immersion schools. We encourage a variety of different methods that students can hand in their work and that can include electronically like padlets or hard copy in books or cartoon strips and reports.
[Special thanks to St Mary’s College & Trident High School]
Te Mātaiaho
Te ao tangata I Social sciences in action
Years 9-10, Video 2: Understand, Know, Do, and the Progress Outcomes
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
In our planning, we started with an existing unit, for example, a unit we've been looking at on migration. We sort out which Know context fit into that. So for us, exploring the ideas of migration policy, particularly focused around Pacific workers and then the Aotearoa New Zealand's histories aspects around the actions of the Polynesian panthers were the sort of Know context we drew on. We back mapped this to the Understand and the big ideas, particularly around the use and misuse of power and then we started looking at some of the Do practices that flowed back from there. So things like using data, thinking critically, thinking conceptually and drawing conclusions.
[Understand, Know, Do
Notice how kaiako:
- Are adapting planning to fit the Understand, Know, Do framework
- Link big ideas into specific contexts
- Design rich learning experiences — drawing on the purpose statement and important considerations
- Respond to the literacy & communications and maths practices inside the Do statements]
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
With the Know context that we've been looking at, we have been really mindful of not just picking them and making one Know context, one unit. It's really important that we kind of weave them together to make something integrated and rich rather than one thing being one topic.
Emily, Year 10 student — St Mary’s College
So we have been learning about migration to New Zealand, specifically Polynesian migration and the dawn raids.
Maria, Year 10 student — St Mary’s College
I discussed with my grandfather as he was one of the people that were deported back to Tonga during that time and he was saying that they were really treated unfairly because of the way they looked and because they weren't the same colour.
Isobella, Year 10 student — St Mary’s College
To show our learning, we made a push pull diagram about how the pulling aspects of Polynesian people coming to New Zealand, the pushing aspects, pushing in from their country and some obstacles they faced whilst in the process of coming to New Zealand.
Julie Farrell, HOD Social Sciences — Trident High School
So for this first topic for year nine, we chose Tūrangawaewae as our overarching title. The Know or the context is our local environment. We're looking at our place and environment and how it's changed post 1840. So we start the unit with Polynesian migration and that is looking at how Māori got to New Zealand and particular emphasis on Whakatāne. The other aspect of this is we're looking at why places are important and how the names have changed over time since Europeans arrived. So for the literacy component of the first topic, we've included a programme that is run through other schools, including our feeder schools called Reciprocal Teaching Three Track. It's a programme of collaborative learning that students work together to learn how to clarify how to think critically and how to write summaries relating to pieces of social science text. We've produced a booklet this year for the numeracy component. In the booklet we've included a range of skills that includes mapping, ratios, reading graphs and tables, all those that we think are important.
[Notice, recognise, and respond to progress using the Progress Outcomes
Notice how kaiako:
- Design flexible supports and offer multiple ways to engage in learning
- Create inclusive assessment opportunities that provide multiple ways to show learning]
Julie Farrell, HOD Social Sciences — Trident High School
We really like to ensure that students have agency in their own learning, so most of our assessments or tasks that are in our topics have a fair degree of choice.
Eleanor Rattray, HOD Social Sciences — St Mary’s College
It was really important for us, when planning, learning and assessment opportunities, that students are able to explain their learning in a way that best suits them and allows them to be successful as the learners that they are. Because we've taken a curriculum first approach, we're now starting to consider how we will assess progress outcomes in social sciences. At the moment, we're looking at what we're assessing and how the Do practices might fit into that. Some of the early sort of ways we're looking at assessing the progress outcomes include looking particularly at conceptual, understanding and communication and seeing how students are able to do those practices.
[Special thanks to St Mary’s College & Trident High School]
Updates to content
The draft refreshed te ao tangata | social sciences learning area was updated in May 2023 with minor changes:
- We improved consistency of how te Tiriti o Waitangi is expressed throughout Te Mātaiaho
- “Important considerations” is now “Planning for teaching”
- Te Mātaiaho is being redesigned in A4 size instead of A3.
The refreshed te ao tangata | social sciences learning area was updated in September 2023 with minor changes to correct spelling and layout errors. (Published 2 November 2023)
The "Getting started guide", "Planning template" and "Planning examples" have been updated with minor corrections to make them consistent with the same supports for mathematics and statistics and English learning areas. (Updated 3 November 2023)
The "Progression in Action Years 9-10" has been replaced by "Progression in Action Years 7-8 and Years 9-10". It now contains content for Years 7-8 as well as Years 9-10. (Updated 24 November 2023)