"Kia tika te kōrero, kia tika te whakaaro"
Let the speech be right, and the thinking be right
Students analyse ideas, arguments, and language choices, and they respond with increasing precision and justification.
How this lesson aligns
This lesson explicitly teaches students to identify flawed reasoning, explain why it weakens an argument, and rebuild the claim using stronger evidence and logic.
Primary planning anchor when this lesson supports persuasive writing, speech, or critical response.
Students evaluate information and communication critically, recognising bias, manipulation, and weak reasoning in media and public discourse.
How this lesson aligns
Students practise finding ad hominem attacks, false dilemmas, straw men, emotional manipulation, and hasty generalisations in contemporary texts and clips.
Strong fit when using the lesson to support citizenship, media studies, or current-issues work.
Students participate in discussion with increasing fairness, care, and awareness of perspective.
How this lesson aligns
The lesson distinguishes critique of reasoning from attack on people. That supports respectful disagreement and stronger oral language in diverse classrooms.
Useful for planning when classroom debate or public-issue discussion needs clearer norms and language.
Students move from shared modelling to independent application through collaborative analysis and feedback.
How this lesson aligns
Whole-class modelling, paired annotation, and argument repair come before independent response, giving kaiako visible formative checkpoints as students learn the fallacy vocabulary.
Use this to justify the lesson’s scaffolded pathway from noticing to naming to rewriting.
Mātauranga Māori Lens
This curriculum companion is informed by mātauranga Māori — the holistic body of Māori knowledge, values, and practices. Kaiako are encouraged to draw connections between the content and tikanga, whanaungatanga, and students's turangawaewae (place and belonging). Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles of partnership, participation, and protection should shape how this material is introduced and discussed in the classroom.
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.