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Curriculum Alignment

Digital Storytelling with Pūrākau

4
Curriculum Links
3
Learning Areas
Phases 4-5
Primary Coverage

"Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au"

I am the river and the river is me

Core classroom match
Students create purposeful multimodal texts that draw on language, image, sound, and structure to communicate to specific audiences.

How this lesson aligns

The lesson asks students to plan and shape digital narratives with clear audience, mode, pacing, and message. The storytelling work is multimodal from the outset rather than treated as a final decoration stage.

📚 English💻 Digital composition🎙️ Multimodal storytelling

Primary planning anchor for script, storyboard, narration, and digital communication decisions.

Strong support
Students design and develop digital outcomes that are purposeful, audience-aware, and responsive to context.

How this lesson aligns

Students are not just using software tools. They are designing a digital outcome with an explicit purpose, audience, and sequence, which strongly supports Hangarau Matihiko thinking about digital design and outcome development.

💻 Digital Technologies🧭 Audience awareness🛠️ Outcome design

Useful when the lesson is part of a wider digital storytelling, podcast, short-film, or media-production sequence.

Strong support
Students recognise that stories carry relationships, values, and cultural knowledge, and that these must be treated responsibly.

How this lesson aligns

The lesson explicitly asks who holds a story, how permission and cultural responsibility work, and how digital retelling changes meaning. That places mātauranga Māori and local curriculum commitments inside the design process rather than on the margins.

🌿 Mātauranga Māori🤝 Local curriculum🧬 Whakapapa and place

Strong fit when kaiako want digital creation to deepen cultural understanding rather than flatten it.

Supporting classroom practice
Students build understanding through modelling, collaborative planning, feedback, and iterative improvement.

How this lesson aligns

The sequence moves from shared story analysis to paired planning and peer review before students begin independent production. This gives teachers visible checkpoints and keeps quality control high before screen time expands.

👥 Collaboration🔁 Iteration📝 Formative checkpoints

Use this to justify the structured progression from cultural analysis to digital production.

Puna Kōrero — Sources

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Learning Media.

Ministry of Education. (2021). Te Mātaiaho: The Refreshed New Zealand Curriculum. Ministry of Education.

Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. (2021). Tātaiako: Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Māori Learners. Teaching Council.